Marshall County Community Corrections Director Ward Byers requested a salary ordinance amendment to bring all of the case managers within the same hourly wage.
Byers asked the Marshall County Council members to consider the pay equity request of $23.07 an hour as discussed with the personnel committee.
“This position fell behind a bit in its hourly rate of pay solely because it is not grant funded,” said Byers. “We were able to acquire that hourly rate of pay with the State of Indiana through the grant. We’re simply asking that this case manager, who is paid out of the project income fund, or user fees and not tax dollars of any kind, be brought up to the same pay rate.”
He explained that this case worker does all of the same work as the other case managers and the salary needs to be adjusted to reflect that effort. The Community Corrections Advisory Board did approve the hourly rate of pay in December.
Byers said the case load has doubled since the restructuring of the criminal code.
“Last year at this time we averaged around 30 individuals. As of today we have 63. That doesn’t include what’s going on in the drug and alcohol portion of our office. Their numbers have increased over 75 from last year.”
Byers said more level four, level five and level six felons are being sentenced to serve time with community corrections.
“These are individuals who would have gone to prison or jail a year ago, but with those changes in House Bill 1006 we’re seeing a different group of individuals who do require far more supervision. It is more challenging. We have added another field officer so we have the ability now to better monitor what they’re doing in their homes. Our office traffic has certainly doubled if not tripled from this time last year.”
Even with the increase in community corrections numbers, the jail population remains at approximately 130 inmates. Programs are offered by Community Corrections to assist incarcerated inmates and clients outside of the jail.
Byers says the county does see a cost savings with community corrections.
“We are saving the county an incarceration cost of $1.4 million a year. Otherwise these individuals would have to be sitting in the county jail or having no supervision at all.”
The council unanimously approved the salary ordinance to reflect the increase in the hourly rate of pay for the community corrections case manager. An additional appropriation of $5,000 was approved to support the increase.
Another request for increase in pay will come before the council in July.
