WALLACE –– The Shoshone County Commissioners approved a $12,000 transfer from the sheriff's jail budget to the sheriff’s patrol overtime budget.  

The move was part of a plan presented to the commissioners last month when Sheriff Holly Lindsey discussed the struggle she was having with staffing the jail.  

Shoshone County Jail is designed to house 48 inmates but regularly has upward of 10 more. A facility is designed to have a staff of 12, including the jail captain. Right now, that number is at four.  

Lindsey said she intends to utilize members of the department’s fully staffed patrol team to work additional hours in the jail, voluntarily, while still making their patrol wages, even if the additional hours are considered overtime.  

This isn’t being considered the staffing issue’s endgame, but instead a stopgap as the SCSO pursues additional jail staff. According to Lindsey, in recent days her office has received at least seven applications for open jail positions.  

She said that with training, it could be five to six months before any applicants are in uniform.  

Lindsey told the commissioners that she would like to try this plan out for 30 days to see how it would affect the department’s budget, which is sitting on a small surplus.

Commissioner Jeff Zimmerman said that since October of last year, the jail has come in under budget by about $47,000 in wages due to the lack of jail staff.  

“My intent is to not eat that budget up by overuse whatsoever,” Lindsey said. “We want to be frugal with the use of it.”  

The voluntary hours Lindsey is looking to fill are during high liability times, including overnights, dinner time, transport and medical holds, and during times of high sickness.  

Some of these are times that can be scheduled while others are situations that require someone to be on-call. 

“A lot of it we can’t anticipate,” Lindsey said.  

The jail has hemorrhaged staff over the years, including 14 total positions during the 2023 and 2024 calendar years.  

The entry-level wage for jail deputies is $21.22 per hour, but most detention deputies only last an average of 24 months, according to Undersheriff Lance Stutzke. This includes their training, so the deputy is only in jail for roughly 18 months before they quit.  

In the interim, SCSO command staff has helped fill the gaps, but that is resulting in a lot of people being stretched too thin for Lindsey’s comfort. She said she believes that by incentivizing the patrol deputies to get additional hours at their overtime rate, it should ease that stress in some fashion.  

“Whatever is needed, we’re all just kind of kicking in to make it happen,” Lindsey said. “We’ll keep doing that to try and keep the cost down.”