FLINT -- Eight inmates were released yesterday bringing the jail population down to regulation or 555 inmates, temporarily.
“It's going to overcrowd quickly again you can't have a jail this small with the criminal element that we have in this community and the violence and expect a small jail to hold it,” said Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell.
Over the last 42 days the Sheriff’s Department and the legal community worked tirelessly to fix the problem.
“It was a team effort it took the judges, the court administrators, my jail staff and Judge Yuille was magnificent,” said Pickell.
In addition the state also provided funds to put nearly 100 inmates on electronic tethers, to ease the overcrowding.
“If they did not give us those tethers we would still be in an overcrowding situation and might not have ever gotten out of it because that's a significant amount of people,” said Pickell.
A number of steps have been taken including re-opening the Flint city lock up to combat the increase in inmates but there is still no answer to the real problem. How can Flint stop crime?
“I suspect that in a relatively short period of time we will be up over 700 again and we will go through the same thing. I have talked to the commissioners about it and they know they are sympathetic to it but they are saying hey we just don't have the money to do anything,” said Pickell.
