The following Graph compares the size of the County Sheriff Staffs of the various counties.

*Source--Harden Political InfoSystems

Kankakee County has more people employed on the Sheriff's Staff than any of the other counties. All of the other counties have larger populations and smaller sheriff's staff. Rock Island county has a population of 151,657 and sheriff staff of 126. Kankakee with a population of 100,090 has a sheriff staff of 153. Does the larger staff translate into more arrests? See the following Graph on next page.

The following graph adds the number of arrests from the Bureau of Justice Statistics FBI Uniform Crime Reports along side of Sheriff Staff size.

*Sources--Referenced above.

With a larger staff, Kankakee County makes fewer arrests than 4 of the other 5 counties. This raises the question of: Are we over staffed in the Sheriff's Department? If Kankakee County had a Sheriff's Staff in proportion (based on population and source data) to the 3 counties with a higher crime rate (Rock Island, Macon, and McClean) our Sheriff's Staff would be 101 instead of 153. If the average cost per employee on staff is $30,000 (benefits included) per year, and a staff reduction of 35 people could be achieved, the resulting savings of $1,050,000 would be nearly enough to pay the mortgage on a new jail based upon the Public Safety Committee's finding that the payment for a $17 Million Dollar Bond Issue would be about $1,000,000 over 25 years.

Additionally, with increased jail capacity, a proportional reduction in probation staff may be possible. This could lead to additional payroll savings to fund the jail.