MOULTRIE, Ga. —  The Colquitt County government is raising the cost of using inmate labor, hoping to turn the situation into a break-even arrangement for the county.

Inmate work details supplied by the Colquitt County Correctional Institution provide a great deal of labor for the county but inmates also staff details that work for the City of Moultrie, Colquitt Regional Medical Center, the Moultrie-Colquitt County Parks and Recreation Authority and the Humane Society of Moultrie and Colquitt County.

The CCCI is operated by the county but houses inmates from across the state under the Georgia Department of Corrections. Colquitt County Administrator Chas Cannon said not all the inmates at the prison participate in work details, but most do.

The state pays Colquitt County $22 per inmate per day to house them at the CCCI, Cannon said, but the county’s actual cost per inmate is $29.91 per day. The county has to make up the rest.

The county has provided work details to other local government agencies for about seven years, Cannon said. Each work detail must be led by a certified corrections officer, and the agencies that used the detail were asked to pay that officer’s salary.

Cannon said the county had not been charging the other agencies for the inmates themselves. They wanted to keep the price low to encourage other governments (such as in the smaller Colquitt County municipalities) to use work details too, but they have not.

On Tuesday, the commission approved an amendment to the intergovernmental agreements that govern use of the work details. The amendment adds the cost of housing the inmate above what the state pays — $7.91 per inmate per day — to the cost paid by the agency using the detail.

Cannon said the other agencies had agreed to the change in conversations he’d had with them. It is not clear which of the groups’ governing boards have officially voted on the amendment.

Currently, the City of Moultrie uses two crews of 6-8 inmates each, the Recreation Authority has one crew of 6-8 inmates, and the humane society and hospital each have one crew of four inmates.

Inmates primarily do manual labor, Cannon said. At the humane society, for instance, their primary job is washing the animals.

Moultrie City Manager Pete Dillard said the city uses its crews to clean the city-owned cemetery as well as ditches and rights-of-way along city streets.

“We’ve had very good results with them,” Dillard said. “We’ve had no real problems. It supplements our work force at a real good price.”

Cannon estimated the city and Rec Authority would see an increase of about $12,000 per detail over the course of a year, while the humane society and hospital would see an increase of about $8,000 per detail.