The Washington County Detention Center opened in June 1995. The Detention Division is the largest of the Washington County Sheriff's Office, employing approximately 87 full time and 6 part time personnel.

The Washington County Detention Center is a 106,000 square foot facility with a capacity of 352 beds for both male and female inmates. Currently, we are housing both sentenced and pretrial inmates who were arrested by local, state or federal authorities. The inmate population recently averages 464 which include approximately 70 female inmates. The headcount has been as high as 526. That makes a ratio of officer to inmate as 1 officer to 66 inmates. This is done in direct supervision as well as indirect supervision.

The Detention Center houses an average of 125 state inmates and approximately 40 federal inmates and the remainder of the population is pretrial and sentenced county inmates. These include but not limited to persons arrested in Washington County, including the Town of Jonesborough. In addition, those persons arrested by the Johnson City Police Department, Veteran's Administration Police Department, East Tennessee State Public Safety, Tennessee Highway Patrol and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency within Washington County are brought to the Detention Center for processing.

In March of 2000 a committee was formed to look into expansion of the current Detention Center for an additional 226 beds of which would be 72 for male maximum, 68 male minimum, 22 female maximum and 64 female minimum. This would bring the total bed capacity to 578.

The revenue generated by inmates comes from federal and state contracts, inmate phone system, and facility commissary sales which help offset the budget. For example, our budget is approximately 4.4 million dollars and last year 2.5 million in revenue was turned into the general fund from these sources.

Detention Officers fingerprint ALL persons arrested and processed at the Detention Center. Currently we use a Live Scan Fingerprint system which produces forensic-quality fingerprint records by electronically scanning and capturing live fingerprints. Traditionally ink fingerprinting methods are subject to smudging, smearing, and over or under inking during the rolling process. The Live Scan system consistently produces clear, classifiable fingerprints that are of higher quality than inked prints.

We also use modern technology to do video arraignments at the Detention Center which has really benefited in many ways. The most important benefit being the elimination of man hours from transporting the inmates back and forth between courts. We have conducted upwards of 30 video arraignments in one day.

The Detention Center has various programs that we are very proud of and will continue them to the best of our ability. They are as follows:

* RSAT (Residential Substance Abuse Treatment)program - It is an intensive 9 month long therapeutic community program that has proven dramatic results once an inmate has graduated and can apply some of the information they have learned.

* We offer the GED program - a certified teacher comes to the Detention Center twice a week to give inmates classes and when ready to test, we set up with Northeast State Technical Community College for an examination.

* Agape – This program is for the female inmates only. Primarily it teaches about sexual integrity and how to make choices they will not regret.

* Project Hope - HIV/Aids awareness and education.

* Alcoholic Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous Treatment programs.

* Religious services and visits by our Departmental Chaplain.