Linn County Jail may end agreement with U.S. government to house federal inmates

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Linn County Jail may stop housing federal inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service if the two organizations can’t come to an agreement in the next few weeks.

The Intergovernmental Agreement between the two agencies, which dictates how much the Marshal Service pays the county per inmate per day and what the responsibilities of each organization are for those inmates, expired in October 2023, according to Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner.

The two agencies began the negotiation process for a new contract in December 2022, but “after over a year of negotiating, we have been unsuccessful in reaching a new agreement,” Gardner said.

Since the contract expired, the organizations have continued following the stipulations outlined in the previous agreement, which had the federal government paying Linn County $86 per inmate per day to house federal inmates. It also pays $43 per hour for time spent by Linn County deputies transporting and guarding federal inmates outside of the jail.

In Fiscal Year 2023, the U.S. Marshals Service paid the county a total of $2,499,848 for housing inmates. Gardner said there were more than 100 federal inmates in the jail during most of that fiscal year, but over time the number has decreased. Recently, there have been fewer than 30 federal inmates at the jail.

On Dec. 21, Gardner provided the federal government with a 30-day notice of intent to terminate their housing agreement, meaning the U.S. Marshals Service has until Jan. 20 to either reach an agreement with the county or remove its inmates from the jail.

Gardner did not say what parts of the contract were in dispute, but said he intends to release that information after the Jan. 20 deadline has passed.

The sheriff’s office made a slight adjustment to the agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service in August 2022 in order to reduce overtime worked by jail staff. The previous contract stated that the county government agreed to provide transportation for federal inmates “subject to the availability of its personnel.” This previously meant that two deputies were required to accompany federal inmates when they left the jail for things like a doctor’s appointment or to go to the hospital.

Taking federal inmates to medical appointments was contributing to excessive overtime for jail staff, so the sheriff’s office asked the federal agency to transport their own detainees to and from scheduled medical appointments and to take over the responsibility of guarding federal detainees within 10 hours of them being admitted to a hospital.

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