The Kalamazoo County Commission may have to dip into covid relief money to close a funding gap for a critical program to keep suspected offenders out of jail. The Office of Community Corrections is looking at a $400,000 shortfall for this coming year because the Pandemic has wiped out their reserves and cut into their income. Director Ken Bobo says their diversion programs save the County a lot more than that just by keeping suspects out of jail, and under their supervision.
“For fiscal year 21 OCC’s program save an aggregate of 24,996 jail bed dates. At 80 dollars a day, that’s 1.999 million dollars.”
Bobo says it also cuts court costs, reduces crime, and reforms repeat offenders.
Finance Director Amanda Morse says Federal Covid dollars could be applied as a stopgap.
“We could use ARPA funds to support his programs, but once we get to 2023 and 2024, we’re going to have figure out how we either step up the general fund support a bit, or he’s going to have look at some programmatic reductions”
Those decisions will be made by summer. The Board has just approved funding to take care of a smaller deficit from 2021.
