When the leadership of the Outagamie County Sheriff’s department officially changed at midnight, there were plenty of empty beds in the county jail.
Now-retired Sheriff Brad Gehring helped put jail diversion programs in place to lower the population, and delay any talks about an expansion. He says right now, they’re at about 80 percent capacity, and they’re able to rent beds to other counties that have full jails.
Gehring says when they started implementing the programs in 2001, it was a radical and controversial change. But he says right now, about 100 inmates are in the community on electronic monitoring bracelets, and they’re not taking up jail beds.
The county’s programs include drug treatment and mental health courts, to try to prevent people from committing future crimes, and ending up back in jail.
