Jails are big business for Carroll County. From the year the first portion of the Jack T. Bell Detention Center on Newnan Road opened in 2001 to the year construction finished in 2003, the amount of money the county government earned for housing prisoners from other municipalities jumped from $170,000 to $1.35 million. At its high point in 2005, that number was $1.79 million.

Beginning in 2006, however, a combination of factors dramatically cut into jail revenue, catching some county officials who had already penciled much higher numbers into the budget by surprise. The discrepancy would eventually play a direct part in the fiscal crisis this past June, said County Comptroller Don Johnson.

“You got a whole huge pot of money that essentially went to nothing,” Johnson said.

But Carroll County Sheriff Terry Langley, whose department runs the jail, said that if there had been greater communication between his office and the Office of the Comptroller during the budget-making process, he and his staff could have helped bring those projections down before the crisis hit.

Langley also said greater communication was still needed given that jail revenue has not met county projections since 2005.

“We need to do a better job of talking with each other,” Langley said.

The Office of the Comptroller penciled $1.69 million from county jail revenue into the 2006 budget. When that revenue only turned into $1.05 million at the end of the year, almost $600,000 less than expected, the county had to dip into its cash reserves to make up the difference.

County officials revised their jail estimates downward for fiscal year 2007, but were still surprised. Jail revenue was estimated at $1.1 million. The actual figure: $400,000, the largest drop between expected and actual revenue of any item in the budget, Johnson said. When the county once again had to reach for its cash reserves in part to make up the difference, it began the chain of events leading to the budget crisis this year.

There were two reasons behind the drop. First, the county is housing more and more prisoners of its own. Carroll County earns money by housing prisoners from other municipalities: cities, surrounding counties whose jails are overcrowded and the state. The amount of money varies, but in general the county earns $40 per prisoner per day for those from surrounding counties, such as Haralson and Heard, $35 from city prisoners per day and $20 for state prisoners.

The Bell Center has a maximum capacity of 678, but prison officials prefer to keep that number down to a more-comfortable 500 prisoners to “avoid stress on manpower,” said Chief Deputy Brad Robinson.

As recently as three years ago, only about 300 of the 500 or so prisoners in the Bell Center were from the county, Robinson said. Today only 20 prisoners are not Carroll County inmates.

Robinson attributed the surge in prisoners from Carroll County to a variety of factors.

“I think it’s possibly from more crime, as the population of the county grows,” Robinson said. “We have a fairly large (police) force. Whether you’re talking about the investigative section, the patrol section, there’s a lot of us working out there. There’s also a lot of offenders out there working against us as well.”

Johnson said no one could have predicted such a surge in prisoners, and if the Sheriff’s Office did, it should have brought it up in previous years’ budgets.

“They (the Sheriff’s Office) need to bring that up,” Johnson said. “Who can say they’re not going to be able to bring in a certain amount of revenue in the middle of July, March, April and May (when the budget is being formed)? How are you going to know that next year you’re not going to have room to put prisoners? You can’t know that until you start locking people up.”

But Langley pointed to the second reason for the decline in jail revenue, that other counties are building more jail space for themselves. Inmates from surrounding counties make up the biggest chunk of money for Carroll County because they are the most numerous, and are housed at a higher rate. At its 2005 zenith, $1.25 million of the $1.79 million in jail revenue for Carroll County was from housing surrounding counties’ inmates.

Douglas County built a $6 million annex to its jail in 2004, and is currently considering a $120 million, 1,500 bed jail in addition to that. Hall County, which at one point spent $80,000 per week to send its inmates to Carroll County, just opened a new jail, Robinson said.

Langley said he knew other counties were opening jails, and though could not have predicted such a large drop in Carroll County’s budget -- roughly $1.2 million during the past two years -- he could have given warning that county officials would soon have to factor in jail growth in other counties.

Johnson said all department heads are sent letters at the beginning of the budget process, about Jan. 1, asking for them to send budget priorities and projected revenue estimates. The projection this year: about $500,000.

Johnson said he would be happy to work closer with the Sheriff’s Office.

“I want to work closer with them, and bring more things out,” Johnson said. “I want work together with them, so we don’t have to advertise things.”