The number of inmates being housed at the Chattooga County Jail have seen a substantial decrease over the past two months.  Chattooga County Sheriff Mark Schrader says that the COVID-19 Pandemic has had an impact on the population decrease.

Sheriff Schrader told WZQZ News that as of yesterday (Monday), there were forty-seven inmates housed at the jail in Chattooga County and only thirteen inmates are being housed in facilities outside the county.  (12 in Floyd County and 1 in Dade County).

The sheriff said that early on during the pandemic outside jails were not accepting inmates.  Also, the sheriff said that the jail in Chattooga County wasn’t transporting any inmates back from the Floyd County Jail, due to the high number of COVID-19 cases in Floyd County.  For now, inmates being brought into the Chattooga County Jail are subjected to a screening process and their temperature is taken.  So far, no one has tested positive for COVID-19 at the Chattooga County Jail.  Sheriff Schrader said that he has had some incoming inmates with certain symptoms put in isolation as a precaution when they were initially booked into the jail.

Sheriff Schrader says that over the next several days the county could see six to eight of the inmates being housed at Floyd County Jail moved back to Chattooga County.

The sheriff said that overall it does seem like there has been fewer arrests, but largely the fewer arrests are due to probation and parole officers holding warrants to try to keep as few in the jail as possible.  Schrader said that at some point there would be an influx of inmates as those warrants are served.  However, the sheriff also said that he hopes that procedures used during this pandemic might be implemented in the future to help control the jail population.