Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office using grant funds for upgrading jail tracking system, purchasing jail related items

Sullivan County Commissioners have authorized the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office to spend grant money received last year on items like a new electronic inmate tracking, managing, and monitoring system as well as better products like mattresses and computers for the jail.

It’s all part of a $900,000 non-taxpayer grant with the Sheriff’s Office, who entered into an agreement with company Securus. Part of the resolution, sponsored by Commissioner Mark Vance that was approved last Thursday, was to upgrade the jail’s outdated manual tracking system, to a new $134,195 electronic version, through company Guardian RFID out of Minnesota. Lee Carswell, Sullivan County Jail Administrator says that the process of booking through this new electronic system will speed things up tremendously.

“We’re overcrowded so anything we can do to ease the work load on officers, it gives them more ability instead of looking down writing in a book, they are actually monitoring inmates which is what we really need right now,” said Carswell.

The other part of the resolution approved was to spend over $50,000 on items ranging from new mattresses to employee computers. Jeff Cassidy, Sullivan County Sheriff, says the new employee computers will help track inmates as part of the new pre-trial release program.

“It’s going to be a whole lot more efficient, they can do their work from their cruisers or office when they go out to monitor the inmates, they can log information there,” said Cassidy.

The grant agreement with Securus is over a five year period.

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