More than 25,000 collect calls to detainees friends and families were placed from these phones in 1997. They are in use 24 hours a day, assistant sheriff Zane Clark told the Modesto Bee. Everybody s always using them. That s good because it keeps them in contact with the outside world. The county can t do anything it wants with the money, though.
State law requires that it be kept in a separate fund and used for inmate welfare .
So Clark, who oversees the county s jail operations, came up with a rather creative plan for how to dispose of the large cash windfall. He says the money will be used to develop an equestrian center near the jail. In keeping with the law that the money benefit jail detainees, Clark says that the county expects to put jail inmates to work at the equestrian center. They ll benefit, Clark explains, by having the opportunity to get out of their jail cells to build corrals, groom horses, and clean stables. Website maintained by Matthew Esget.