If you live in Horry County, you may have wondered why you don’t see inmates picking up litter on the sides of roads anymore.
Inmates haven’t picked up trash in the county for years, but county council members say people frequently ask them, “why?”
At Monday’s public safety committee meeting, Councilman Paul Prince brought up that people often ask him why a jail with 700-800 inmates does not have any of them working on the side of the road.
The sheriff’s office said it’s a good question and explained at the meeting the different reasons for that.
“Because of security reasons,” Tom Fox, Chief Deputy for HCSO said. “We can’t allow pre-trial inmates outside the facility.”
Only inmates that have been sentenced can work outside facilities, and there are not a lot of them. Right now there are only about 30 to 40 sentenced inmates in Horry County.
“We typically use on any shift ten inmates in the kitchen, and then another ten inmates for the afternoon shift, and the rest are used for clean up details inside the facility,” Fox said.
You used to see inmates working outside in Horry County because 15 or 20 years ago the number of sentenced inmates was much higher.
“It was around 100, 115, so we had plenty of inmates that we could put out on different work details,” Fox said.
The numbers dropped when people started looking at sentencing differently.
“It’s a difference in the sentencing philosophy,” Fox said. “It’s just cheaper to operate the jail to keep sentenced inmates out.”
He said this is especially true in family court– that if someone is serving time in jail then they’re not working and paying child support.
“It’s a different philosophy to keep people more productive in family court and keep their payments, so it’s reduced and it’s also reduced our cost to manage inmates,” Fox said.
You still see inmates working outside in other counties, because there is a program through the Department of Corrections where state inmates come back to work in counties.
Fox said Horry County has had problems in the past managing state inmates, so the county opted out of that option.