The Russell County Detention Center’s capacity sat at 137 percent earlier this month as jails around the state are again seeing rising inmate numbers following the lessening of pandemic measures put in place by Gov. Andy Beshear in 2020 to control the spread of Covid-19, according to Department of Corrections data.
In fact, a majority of Kentucky’s county jails are over capacity, and several have more than double the number of inmates that they were built to house. Among them, the Adair Regional Jail’s capacity was at 200 percent and the Pulaski County Detention Center was 202 percent. The Casey County Jail was at 106 percent while the Wayne County Detention Center’s capacity was at 127 percent earlier this month.
The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy says that with more than 21,000 people in Kentucky county jails and over 9,000 incarcerated in state prisons, the commonwealth has one of the highest imprisonment rates in the world.