Mar 27, 2020

Some Kansas inmates set free amid coronavirus outbreak

Posted Mar 27, 2020 2:00 PM

SEDGWICK COUNTY— The spread of the coronavirus across Kansas prompted officials to set some inmates free.

Sedgwick County announced Thursday it had released about 200 inmates from the county jail to free space to isolate inmates who become ill with the virus in the coming weeks.

According to Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett.

"On March 12, the jail provided my office a list of everyone in the jail (including those housed at the annex or out-of-county).

We started with 1,645 inmates involving 1,689 district court cases; From there we whittled out defendants being held of cases with SL4 and above which got us down to 1307 cases involving 1038 defendants.

From that group 154 are awaiting sentencing (according to a list provided by a the district court);

There had been approximately 95 cases awaiting a hearing for a probation violation according to information from the jail earlier this week. (that number changed by Friday)

We went through the list and identified 150 people last week that could be released on bond without posing a community safety risk – namely, traffic cases; property crimes; drug cases. Efforts are under way currently to go through the remaining cases again to look for additional cases that may be viable for release without posing a community safety risk.

We started the process of handling probation violation hearings Wednesday.  More probation violation hearings and sentencing hearings are being scheduled. We continue to work with the defense counsel to provide the court with lists of cases ready for hearing while complying with victim notification requirements."

The state reported Thursday that it has at least 168 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 42 from Wednesday. Three corornavirus-related deaths have been reported.