BOISE — Jail overcrowding is an ongoing issue we've been covering for years. But now, we're learning that overcrowding is behind some recent jail riots.
Those riots happened in the Canyon County Jail last month, as well as at the Bannock County Jail in Pocatello just last week.
And because there are more inmates than there is space for them, Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue says these types of situations are going to happen, and they're going to happen more.
Twelve gang members were involved in last month's fight at the Canyon County Jail.
But because it involved more than two people under state statute it can be charged as rioting, which means a harsher sentence.
Donahue says jails typically use a classification system to separate inmates who may be from rival gangs, like in this case or have had problems with individuals in the past.
But because of the overcrowding issues, he says there is just no room to separate those inmates.
“That's not fair to the officers, and in some sense not fair to the inmates, in terms that we're having to deal with this, and it's certainly not fair to the taxpayer who at the end of the day has that exposed liability to the county and they're the ones who are going to be paying those bills,” Donahue said.
So what's the solution?
Sheriff Donahue says to build a new jail.
He says the board of county commissioners is working on that, and he believes they can and will, put a bond on the November ballot. He says they're still working on trying to figure out how much that jail would cost though.
But he says it's necessary, regardless of the price because of the tremendous number of people moving here.
To put it into perspective, Donahue tells us on Wednesday he had 519 inmates in custody, but only 477 jail beds. So he had to send some of those inmates to other counties.
To make matters worse, Donahue says he has 700 people on pretrial who aren't in jail but who are supposed to be.