Near-Capacity Cook County Jail Bleeds Budget

The Cook County Jail is about to overflow.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is asking the detention center to reduce its more than 10,000 inmates by 1,500 because there is not enough money to pay for them, ABC7 recently reported. At its current rate of admissions, the prison is poised to exceed its 10,150-prisoner capacity "within days."

"The population I had today is what I'd normally have at the worst time of the year," Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told ABC7 this past week. "You can't sustain that. My overtime budget is exploding right now, absolutely exploding. I'm already close to going through what I was supposed to do for the whole year."

To prevent overcrowding, Preckwinkle proposes that by mid-summer, 1,500 prisoners be transferred to home monitoring, which costs nearly $113 less per day than prison.

She noted that 70 percent of the current inmates are in jail for non-violent offenses. 

Get the rest of the story from ABC7.