The Freestone County Jail has been de-populated indefinitely, and its inmates relocated to Limestone County, according to a press release issued Friday, April 5th by Freestone County Sheriff Jeremy Shipley.
“As of Friday, April 5th, 2019, the Freestone County Sheriff’s Office will no longer be housing incarcerated persons at our jail facility for the time being. Due to a severe shortage of manpower and trained jail staff, we have no other choice at this time but to house all of our jail population at another facility. This was a recommendation made by the State Jail Commission in recent discussions and, I, as the Sheriff, will not allow the safety, security, and welfare, of any officer or incarcerated person to be compromised due to a lack of manpower and properly trained staff. Therefore, the decision has been made that the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office will house all Freestone County incarcerated persons until further notice. The Freestone County Sheriff’s Office and the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office already have an agreement in place, and have for many years, where Limestone County houses all of our overflow inmates due to our jail facility only built to hold a maximum of 43 people; so this course of action will not be new between our agencies. However, there will be changes in many procedures regarding arrests, magistrations, transports, and court dockets, etc., that will take some time to adjust and get used to. This will also, unfortunately, have an effect on other county agencies and offices and how they operate. For that we apologize, but, again, we cannot jeopardize anyone’s safety and security due to our current staffing issues. We are very hopeful that this is a temporary or short term solution and we are able to employ the necessary jail staff and get them trained properly in order to begin housing our own county inmates again.” Sheriff J. Shipley
The Times will continue to follow the story as it develops. Look for an in-depth look at how this happened, and what it means for Freestone County, in next week’s edition.
