Saturday, December 15, 2007
This article was published in The Valdosta Daily Times on April 16, 2006. Quite frankly, we missed it. We are posting it now because we think the situation in Clinch County Georgia mirrors the situation in Dorchester County South Carolina.
Granted, the cases are not identical. However, both cases involved the assessment of fees by the County Sheriff against "pre-trial detainees" in the absence of specific statutes authorizing the assessment. However, in the case of Clinch County, the funds apparently went into the county's general budget, whereas, in the case of Dorchester County, whatever monies were not embezzled by the Chief Jailer were apparently used primarily for entertaining the Sheriff's friends, supporters, employees, and volunteers.
Dorchester County Sheriff Ray Nash is now taking a beating in the Summerville Journal Scene. And, in our opinion, he deserves to take that beating. For years, we questioned the practice of, among other things, charging inmates such outlandish toll rates for the use of the telephone, particularly when the calls were local in nature. Moreover, we have always considered this to be a slush fund which should have been used for the benefit of the prisoners rather than to pay the salaries of the Sheriff's political allies. But now we learn that not only has Sheriff Nash failed to keep track of the proceeds of an illegal booking fee, but that he has not been keeping track of the telephone toll charge account either; this is despite the fact that that particular account is both known to and monitored by the County Auditor. On this last point, the following was published in the Summerville Journal Scene:
In his summary, which was obtained by The Journal Scene under a Freedom of Information Act request, Wise states that between Oct. 15, 2003 and Sept. 27 of this year, only 37 of the 51 checks issued to the jail by phone system provider Pay Tel were received by the county treasurer's office. After checking with her staff Wednesday, treasurer Mary Pearson said Pastor brought most of the Pay Tel checks to her office himself but did on occasion send someone else from the sheriff's office.Wise alleges that in the first nine months of 2007 alone, Pay Tel checks totaling more than $18,000 were deposited into the jail account Pastor set up with Bank of America.
Any one who cares to read the three most recent Summerville Journal Scene articles about this matter can click the following links:
