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Running a jail is a tough way to make money. But Daggett County (population 900) seems to be making a go of it.
It's criminal justice on the cheap: Build a million-dollar correctional facility in the middle of nowhere, run it with a skeleton crew and take those state checks straight to the bank.
Daggett's jail seems a reasonable economic development strategy for a sparsely populated, income-challenged rural county.
But convicted murderers Danny Martin Gallegos and Juan Carlos Diaz-Arevalo exposed the flaws in the plan. Twice, prisoners have scaled the razor-wire fence and run to freedom and eventual capture in Wyoming.
This is starting to look like a pattern, like Daggett could be in over its head.
About one-fourth of the state's 6,500 inmates are housed in county jails. Some are assigned by judges; others, dangerous felons among them, are housed with the counties per contract with state state Corrections managers. Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo fall into the second category.
The arrangement allows the state to house prisoners on the cheap - taking a 30 percent cut on the cost of locking them up in Draper or Gunnison. And the counties have a guaranteed source of income. It translates to $45 a day - or $1.3 million a year in Daggett County's case. Everyone's happy with the deal - until someone goes missing.
Utah Association of Counties Director Brent Gardner assures me none of Utah's counties are flush with cash housing state prison inmates. "They're not making money; they're losing money," Gardner says.
That may be true in big counties like Weber, Davis, Salt Lake and Utah, where crowds of state prisoners take up beds. Like clockwork, county officials trudge to the Capitol every winter, begging legislators for more jail reimbursement money.
But prison contracts can't hurt the bottom line in rural Utah. For Daggett, seven out of 10 inmates come from the state. The math also works in San Juan County, where 64 of the jail's 70 beds are filled with state convicts. However you figure the numbers, those county jail budgets depend on state prisoners.
Daggett - entryway to Flaming Gorge and not much else - didn't have to build a jail. Piute, Morgan and Wayne counties all have resisted the temptation, contracting with neighboring counties to house their prisoners. But Daggett's isolation and the potential income apparently outweighed the risks.
So far, only one person has taken responsibility for the jail break: the lone armed guard who was stationed in the bathroom for much of the day. Everyone else seems to have called in sick. I couldn't get through to Commission Chairman Stewart Leith. Sheriff Rick Ellsworth has forwarded all calls to Sweetwater County.
It's not enough that Wyoming police have to catch Utah's escaped felons. Now, they also have to explain how they got there. walsh@sltrib.com