Final inspection of jail slated for Friday morning

If all goes well, nearly 100 Whitley County inmates scattered in jails across the state will be moved back home soon.The Kentucky Department of Corrections is scheduled to make a jail inspection Friday morning, and Whitley County officials will probably know before noon when the jail will be allowed to reopen, said Cheryl Million, a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections.
Million said the inspection will be a full jail inspection that will look at not only the physical aspects of the jail and food service area, but also policy and procedure manuals to ensure that adequate training has been done for the staff. Assuming the jail passes the inspection, it will probably be allowed to open again in short order, but Million said that she’s not sure exactly when it would happen.
Whitley County Jailer Ken Mobley said he is hoping to reopen the jail Friday or Saturday provided the facility passes the inspection.
He said the jail has nothing major left to do in terms of making repairs or renovations that corrections officials had already pointed out during previous inspections.
Mobley said Monday afternoon that so far he has hired about 24 employees, and that the total number will probably be 30 or fewer employees when the jail opens. Three to four employees have been hired to run the kitchen, and the jail has contracted with a nurse and doctor to provide inmate medical services.
The hiring of the jail staff will have to be approved by the Whitley County Fiscal Court, which is expected to call a special meeting Friday if all goes well with the Corrections Department inspections.
Jail staff has been training this week on how to use a state police-fingerprinting machine, as well as how to use the jail’s intercom and computer systems, Mobley noted.
Mobley said that he isn’t sure yet if the jail will be housing Knox County prisoners in the beginning, or exactly how many prisoners that the jail will have when it reopens.
Whitley Circuit Clerk Gary Barton said that as of Friday afternoon, there were 96 Whitley County inmates being housed in other counties, and that the number of inmates fluctuates at any given time.
Mobley said that there hasn’t been one particular area, which has been the hardest in terms of things he had to do to get the jail back open, and that the major difficulty has been managing all the tasks, which needed to be done.
For instance, Mobley said that it hasn’t been unusual for him to have an appointment with one person, and have three or four other people come by the jail or call needing to talk to him during that time.
The Whitley County Jail first opened in August 2004, but was closed down on July 23 after Corrections Department Commissioner John D. Rees obtained an order in Franklin Circuit Court upholding his decision to close the facility for numerous reasons.
After Whitley County Jailer Jerry Taylor resigned on Sept. 30, Rees said he would be happy to work with the county to get the facility back open again.
Whitley County Judge-Executive Mike Patrick appointed Mobley as the new jailer on Oct. 5.