When Centralia police arrested a 41-year-old Olympia man with several felony warrants on Tuesday, the Lewis County Jail wouldn’t take him.
Instead, an officer had to drive him to Thurston County, where he was booked into jail.
The situation wasn’t an outlier. In recent weeks, the department has reported subjects being declined by the jail on several occasions, including a recent situation where a woman was contacted six times by officers for a broad range of crimes before being accepted by the jail.
The reason? A staffing shortage at the Lewis County Jail.
Jail Chief Chris Sweet confirmed the current booking restrictions in an email to The Chronicle this week.
As of last week, the Lewis County Jail accepted bookings for those arrested for Class A and B felonies, domestic violence and driving under the influence (DUI).
Under these restrictions, those arrested for Class C felonies or lesser offenses that were not domestic violence or DUI cannot be booked into the Lewis County Jail.
However, all criminal arrests are subject to a supervisor override for booking, Sweet said.
The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office initially implemented booking restrictions at the jail in 2019 due to a remodeling project, according to previous Chronicle coverage. The restrictions remained in place due to ongoing staffing issues.
“We are scrambling to maintain minimum staffing levels and to help mitigate that, we are trying to reduce (Lewis County Jail) population as much as possible for safety and security,” Sweet said in an email to a Chronicle reporter on Tuesday. “However, our population has not been reducing as much as we would like.”
Last August, Undersheriff Wes Rethwill said there were nine vacancies in the corrections department and that he could foresee “at least three more on the horizon.”
The corrections division had nine vacances, three staff members on leave and one on military duty as of Wednesday, Sweet said.
According to the Lewis County Jail website, the custody division is run by one lieutenant, who oversees four custody squads each led by one sergeant, composed of seven or eight deputies.
Squads work 12-hour shifts with three or four days off per week on a rotating schedule, with a total of six months on day and six months on night shifts throughout the year.
With the current and predicted vacancies, Rethwill said last August, “that’s essentially two squads that we’re going to be down, and it’s going to be very, very difficult for us to continue operations. … It’s not plug and play. It takes a while to get people up to speed.”
The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office plans to “release some of the restrictions” when its staff members who are in the academy, on family and medical leave or completing military service return, Sweet said this week.
When he released the information on the jail’s booking restrictions to The Chronicle, Sweet expressed concern about “the potential that criminal activity increases in our community … once booking restrictions are known.”
Sweet added that that concern is one of the reasons why there is a supervisor override system in place.
Even with that override system in place, the booking restrictions have proven frustrating to local law enforcement personnel.
“The frustrating part for us is that here we are — and I know it's not just us — that we have people that we want to book in a jail and that we believe should go to jail for the safety of our community, and when we can't put those people in the jail, that just basically leaves those people back in the community to where we have to deal with them again and again,” Centralia Police Chief Stacy Denham said. “So it's actually taking up more time for my officers and not protecting our community the way that we believe that we'd like to protect our community.”
As of Wednesday morning, the Lewis County Jail had a total system population of 140 inmates, including 127 in the general population and 13 in the Work Ethic and Restitution Center.
During the same week in 2019 — before the jail implemented booking restrictions — the Lewis County Jail had a total system population of 208 inmates, with 179 in general population, 28 in the Work Ethic and Restitution Center and one on work release.
For more information, visit https://lewiscountywa.gov/offices/sheriff/corrections-jail, call jail administration on Mondays through Fridays at 360-740-2714 or email lcjail@lewiscountywa.gov.
