Sheley to pay for his jail stay

GALESBURG – Knox County Sheriff David Clague’s accommodations might be the cheapest in Galesburg, but they’re almost certainly not the nicest.

Clague plans to start charging inmates $5 a night to stay in his central Illinois jail. That fee also will be applied to its most notorious inmate, murder defendant Nicholas Sheley of Sterling.

Sheley, 30, is being held on 10 counts of first-degree murder and seven other felony charges related to the bludgeoning death of Ronald A. Randall, 65, of Galesburg. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

“He’s gonna be charged,” Clague said of Sheley, who also is under indictment for the deaths of five Whiteside County residents and an Arkansas couple in Festus, Mo., killed during a 6-day, two-state rampage in late June 2008.

Clague told Knox County Board members this week that he hopes to raise more than $100,000 a year through the nightly fees. Most of them liked the idea and voted to let the sheriff do it.

Only one member objected, arguing that inmates’ families would wind up footing the bill.

Clague says that’s possible. But he argues that there’s no reason the county should have to hand out three meals a day and provide a heated and cooled room for nothing.

Rather than present the inmates with a bill, Clague said, the fee will be deducted daily from each inmate’s commissary fund, which is funded with money orders sent to the jail by an inmate’s family or friends.

The fund, which is used to buy snacks or toiletries, is controlled by a computerized system that allows inmates to enter an account number and make purchases without exchanging cash.

The fee will be deducted by the company that maintains the system, which then will cut a check to the county for the collected fees.

“We’ll see if it works,” Clague said. “I know other counties thoughout the country have utilized this, ranging from $60 a day all the way down to 5. it has generated a fair amount of revenue.

“As quickly as it appeared, it can disappear” if he thinks the inmates are too indigent to pay, he said. “On the flip side, if I feel that we can increase it a dollar or five, then it can be done.”