-Messenger photo by Peter Kaspari
Regina Roest, an officer at the Webster County Jail, looks up information on the jail’s computer recently. Sheriff Jim Stubbs recently reported the jail as being full, and said mental health issues are a major reason why it’s full.

The Webster County Jail is full, and people struggling with mental health issues are a major reason why.

As of Thursday, Webster County Sheriff Jim Stubbs said there were 59 people in the custody of Webster County. Not all of those inmates are being held in the jail on the top floor of the Law Enforcement Center, though.

“We’re running a lot more than we were a year ago,” Stubbs said.

It’s rare for the jail to be at or near capacity, he said.

Inspectors have told Jail Administrator Steve “Wally” Elifrits that he has floor space for 77 inmates, but he likes to keep that number at less than 60.

“There is no way I can keep 77 up there,” Elifrits said. “It would be elbow to elbow. People would be fighting. Staff would get hurt having to break up fights. It’d be miserable.”

Stubbs and Elifrits say mental health issues are why the jail is full.

“For one reason or another, mental health is a big reason that maybe they get in trouble or commit crimes,” Stubbs said. “The jail’s not really the place for them to begin with. You’re not going to solve the mental health issue by having them in jail.”

Elifrits said sometimes it’s easier to take a person with a mental health issue to jail than get them mental health services.

It’s a “short-term problem-solver for everybody but the jail,” he said.

“Why sit on you for seven hours at the hospital when it takes me 15 minutes to book them into jail?” he said. “We got a guy that’s basically a mental patient. Now we made him a criminal, and there lies the issue: Do we want to keep making all the mental people criminals? That’s what we seem to be doing.”

Stubbs is direct: People who need mental health services do not belong in jail.

“We take people that belong in one system, typically the mental health system, and then we introduce them to the criminal system,” he said. “All we did was enroll them in two different systems, and we didn’t accomplish anything.”

Sometimes, Elifrits said, people with mental health issues end up in bigger trouble in jail because of their conditions.

He used as an example a woman who was suffering from mental health issues who was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge, which is a simple misdemeanor.

“And she tried to stab one of my officers. She was charged with assault on myself and another.”

He added, “If they would have the staffing to take her to the hospital and get committed, she probably wouldn’t have these great big charges over her.”

Jail staff has been forced to learn how to properly deal with mentally disturbed individuals.

“Yes, we train for mental health just because it’s so prevalent for us,” Elifrits said. “Unfortunately, we have to be doctors and psychiatrists and everyone else besides our job. It’s hard on our staffing, plus just the whole court system.”

The jail, in an effort to assist inmates who suffer from mental health troubles, recently started a program called Stepping Up. The goal is to prevent crime before it happens and to prevent inmates from committing more crimes upon release.

“We have a counselor come up and she tries to re-enroll (inmates) in Social Security and get housing before they get out so we don’t just throw them to the streets,” Elifrits said. “Get their basic needs met before we let them out of jail.”

A shorter path is not feasible, according to Stubbs.

“There’s no quick fix to the amount of people that are upstairs,” he said.

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While people with mental health issues are a major reason the jail is full, Stubbs said that’s only one aspect of the problem the jail is facing.

Another is the severity of the crimes being committed.

“At one time we had, if I remember right, we had five either first-degree murder or attempted murder people up there,” Stubbs said, referring to the last year. “That was unheard of 10 years ago.”

Those inmates aren’t necessarily from Webster County.

“I help other counties out, like Humboldt and Sac and Calhoun, by holding their class A’s for them,” Elifrits said, referring to people charged with felonies.

In turn, other counties help Webster County when its jail is full.

“They’re housed in other counties,” Stubbs said. “Wally has agreements with other counties, but it’s an expense.”

That’s something else Stubbs said people might not realize: The more inmates that are housed in Webster County, the more expenses the county incurs.

Replacing mattresses, serving meals, securing medications and doctors all add up the costs to the county.

“It’s a lot more expenses than just a uniform,” Stubbs said.

Elifrits does his best to get people out of jail as quickly as he can, he said, oftentimes working with the Webster County attorney’s office to see which inmates can be released.

“I’ll call over and say, ‘Hey, take a look at this one or this one,'” he said. “They take a look at it and try to get people moving as quick as they can. They do a good job of it.”

“To keep people moving,” Stubbs said, “it’s a team effort.”