AUSTIN COUNTY EXPERIENCING JAIL STAFFING ISSUES
Austin County Commissioners Court convened at the Sheriff’s Office Training Room in Bellville on Tuesday afternoon to discuss staffing issues at the Austin County Jail.
Sheriff Jack Brandes started the meeting by stating that, “The reason we are here is because we lost two more people last week.”
Out of a total staff of 12 in the jail. Five are new hires with less than five months on the job, and they are working under temporary licenses as jailers. This is the bare minimum number of staff required to meet jail standards and allows no time to train employees or have any time off.
Brandes acknowledged that it was his responsibility to manage the jail and added that, “we will do what is best for the community, to keep them safe. We are going to keep people in jail that need to be in jail. But we have under-trained jailers here, and it is also our responsibility to keep the inmates and jailers safe.”
Options include moving all inmates and operating the Austin County Jail as a receiving facility for 60 days while in-house training takes place, bring in certified jail instructors for licensing training and/or sending new jailers out to schools.
These proposals will be presented to the next Commissioners Court meeting on Monday, October 27th.