Warren County Regional Jail releases annual report
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – The Warren County Regional Jail released its 2020 end of the year report that shows COVID impacted inmates and the community in multiple ways.
The report shows that participation in classes and programs were significantly lower in 2020 than in previous years in some cases – the reason, the pandemic.
Warren County Jailer Stephen Harmon said 2020 has been the hardest year he has ever worked in law enforcement.
“We are still doing programs and classes here, we’ve just decreased the size of the classes where they can be spread out and of course they’re masked all the time when they’re in classes. But I hope as the vaccines are offered here to the incarcerated population that we can increase the number of people in classes and give them the opportunities for church services and other things that we’ve become a custom to you before the pandemic,” said Harmon.
Inmates take these classes in order to reduce time on their sentences, make money to pay for restitution and child support.
Litter pick up has been on hold for nearly a year now because of the virus as have other work release programs.
“On a normal basis, we all have a full-time job getting out and, you know, we pick up litter on the streets. And we clean up the parks. We have a lot of different jobs and with us being locked down, we had to learn how to work within the jail. Not just us, but the officers had to learn how to make that work. We got so many inmates it was hard for them as well as us to get used to everybody locked down,” said Tye Angel, an inmate.
Angel said the jailer has done a good job trying to handle all the issues that the pandemic has caused for the jail.
The jailer also says he is hoping to be allowed to send state inmates out to clear trash off of the roadsides in the near future.
The jailer said he expects inmates will be eligible for vaccinations against the virus soon which will hopefully allow jails to get all of their programs back up and operating fully once again.
