Do Columbia residents pay twice for the Richland County jail?

Every year, residents living in the city of Columbia pay millions of dollars in property and other taxes to fund both county and city services. But they pay twice for one service — the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.

Columbia doesn’t have its own jail. So nearly every time a Columbia police officer arrests a suspect, he or she is taken to the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, which is Richland County’s jail.

One way Columbia residents pay for the jail is on their Richland County property tax bill. On the most recent bill, a Columbia resident living in their own $200,000 home paid $479 for all county operations. Those operations include $30.7 million for the jail.

All county residents pay that property tax whether they live in a city or not.

But unlike residents in unincorporated areas of Richland County, Columbians pay a second time whenever city police arrest a suspect. The city police department pays Richland County $75 per night for every suspect arrested by city police and housed at the jail. During the current fiscal year, that’s expected to cost the city and its taxpayers a total of $716,344.

“On the surface it may seem like city of Columbia residents are just paying more, but … any other municipality within Richland County, has a similar situation,” said Columbia City Councilman Tyler Bailey. “An alternative would be that municipalities have their own jails.”

Indeed, Forest Acres at $75 and Irmo at $71 pay a daily fee to house inmates, according to spokespeople for the municipalities. The fees are paid from a variety of taxes paid by city or town residents.

In fiscal year 2024, Forest Acres residents paid $18,000 to the county for the jail. In Irmo, residents paid $14,200.

There once was a Columbia city jail, where suspects arrested within the city limits were housed. But city officials turned the jail over to the county in 1988, according to a historical timeline on the Columbia Police Department’s website.

The transfer of Columbia’s jail to the county created an overlap of city and county services, resulting in what may seem like double taxation for things like the jail, Bailey said. But Columbia residents would likely be paying even more than they do now if the city had its own jail, he added.

“We have to pay for it somehow,” Bailey said. “If someone says they don’t want to be double taxed for the (county) jail, then we would have to have a city jail, where, in a large city, we would have to pay for separate correctional officers, separate jail related services, separate food costs for inmates and more.”

While not justifying the double tax, Bailey says it creates a benefit in that the city doesn’t have to share in liability costs associated with the jail.

In recent years, the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center has been plagued with an array of challenges, including inmate deaths, stabbings, escapes, allegations of official misconduct by jail employees and poor housing conditions. As a result, the facility faces a slew of lawsuits, with the most recent, in March, coming from Ralph Gunter, a former inmate at the jail who claims he suffered from assault and neglect while incarcerated.

In addition, the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center has come under a federal civil rights investigation, following claims that the jail failed to protect incarcerated people from violence and subjected them to dangerous living conditions.

In 2022, for example, an inmate died of dehydration, which was ultimately ruled a homicide.

Although the city contributes to the jail’s inmate population, it doesn’t share liability with the county.

“So, if somebody files a (wrongful) death case against Alvin S. Glenn, Richland County is the named party,” Bailey said. “Self-insured city of Columbia is not having to pay out of our general fund for these claims.”

In addition, Bailey pointed to crime trends, which have prompted some to rally against inmates making bond.

“There are some members of the public who want bond denied, they want more people to stay in jail until their case goes to trial, and, you know, that requires significant overhead costs.

“I want as much money in the pockets of residents of the city of Columbia as possible,” Bailey said. “But if we did not have a county jail, we would have to manage one ourselves, and the liability risks associated with that would be shared with our constituents. So, we benefit by, sort of, contracting our jail services to the county.”