El Paso County Jail overcrowded, more female inmates than ever before

A growing problem in El Paso County is the number of criminals getting booked into the Criminal Justice Center, and not having room for them.

On Wednesday, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office announced more women than ever had been booked in putting the cells at their capacity. Female inmates were seen sleeping on beds outside of a cell because there weren’t any left.

El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder says, “when I first took office, we had about 1,300 people with a buffer. Today, that buffer is gone.”

More than 1,800 people are inside the jail, but a few hundred leave during the day for work-release programs.

When the jail first opened, there was only one female ward, but the number of women committing crimes in El Paso County has gone up so much, now women occupy five wards — that’s a fifth of the jail’s total space, and their crimes don’t look any different than crimes by men.

Elder says, “It’s all over the board. It’s everywhere from domestic violence to property crimes, drug crimes so it’s hard to pinpoint one specific thing we could change.”

In a growing economy and the state’s population booming, the sheriff says it’s inevitable that he and the community might have to start thinking about a new jail down the road.

“What we don’t want to do is wait until it’s too late, but we don’t want to go to the community with these questions before we’ve done everything we can to lower those numbers and say we’re doing this effectively,” says Elder.

Until then, he says his office is doing everything they can to be as efficient and effective with the people they’re booking in.