JANESVILLE — When Victor Roice circled in the grass, he didn’t think he’d get locked in jail.
The 20-year-old Janesville man was ticketed for driving on public property after an officer suspected he was spinning doughnuts.
Roice never paid the fine or a separate ticket for underage drinking. He was locked in the Rock County Jail.
“I thought it was kind of bogus,” Roice said. “I wasn’t able to afford the fines at the time.”
About 25 inmates like Roice are jailed on municipal charges each day, but the county is nearly doubling its fee to house them in hopes to reduce that number.
The county will increase the rate Thursday from $30 a day to $52 a day. The fee is charged to cities, villages and towns.
Offenders jailed on municipal charges have been convicted of offenses ranging from drug possession and disorderly conduct to failure to return library books and curfew violations.
The jail is crowded and shouldn’t hold inmates on minor violations, said Russ Podzilni, county board chair.
“Don’t send somebody out there who has an overdue book fine, even if it’s a year old,” he said.
The rate hike might deter judges from jailing offenders for minor tickets, Podzilni said.
Bed space could be saved for more dangerous criminals, he said.
A rate increase also could encourage the growth of the alternative Workenders Program, Sheriff Bob Spoden said. The program allows offenders to work off their fines in lieu of jail time.
Municipalities will save money if their inmates participate in Workenders, Spoden said. Municipalities aren’t charged when their inmates join the program.
But town, city and village budgets could be impacted by the increased cost of sending offenders to jail, said Mary Abegglen, court clerk for the town of Beloit.
The extra cost might trickle down to taxpayers, she said.
“You’re talking almost double from what we were paying before,” Abegglen said. “It is substantial for small departments.”
For example, possession of marijuana carries a $1,306 fine in the town of Beloit. If the fine is not paid, the person must sit 26 days in jail. Then the municipality could be billed $1,352 for holding that person in jail for $52 a day.
“The municipality has to come up with $1,300,” Abegglen said.
But county officials argue that $52 a day is still cheaper than the actual cost of jailing an inmate.
It costs the jail about $64 a day to hold an inmate. The cost includes food, utilities, staff and other expenses required to run the jail.
The new fee will be closer to the actual cost of doing business, Spoden. The amount was chosen because $52 a day is what it costs Rock County to rent jail beds from other counties.
“The reality of it was that they were paying $32 a day, and they had not had an increase since 1988,” Spoden said.
Municipalities should have known an increase was evident, county board supervisor Larry Wiedenfeld said.
“I doubt that it’s going to exact any difficulty. This is something I think they really should have expected to occur,” he said. “It’s not, in my mind, a great increase.
“It’s something that had to be done in fairness and equity to the overall cost.”
No one opposed the fee increase when the county board held a public hearing. Supervisors passed the increase with a unanimous vote.
“Perhaps the increase was overdue in all honesty,” Wiedenfeld said.
After spending time in jail, Roice didn’t have to pay his fines. Instead, he used his money to support his 4-year-old daughter.
“I felt like I shouldn’t have had to sit … for the fines, but then again, it was my fault for not paying them,” Roice said.