The inmate population at the Branch County jail finally went down a bit over the weekend, but it was a day too late to prevent an overcrowding emergency, which is expected to be declared today by the courts.
The rated capacity is 138, which was the number on Friday, Saturday it was 136 but yesterday, it was back up to 141. When the number of prisoners is above 138 for seven straight days, the overcrowding declaration kicks in. That will mean sentence reductions for around 20 non violent misdemeanor offenders who get their release papers. The last such overcrowding emergency in Branch County happened back in October of 2008.
