Logan County jailer Bill Jenkins spoke to the fiscal court on Tuesday about the jail’s need to start collecting on some of the outstanding debts that are owed by past inmates.

“During our last audit, the auditor told us that we need to do something to collect some of these fees that are owed,” Jenkins said.

So Jenkins contacts three different collection agencies about employing their help.

He heard back from two of them - Hillcrest collection agency in Bowling Green and Pennyrile collection agency in Hopkinsville.

Both were willing to collect debts from past inmates for the Logan County Detention Center. Hillcrest would take a 40 percent cut of any funds collected while Pennyrile would take a 35 percent cut.

Jenkins said that Pennyrile had no previous experience of collecting debts for county jails, so he would prefer the fiscal court give him the okay to contract with them.

Magistrate Jo Orange asked Jenkins to explain why he wanted to go with the Bowling Green company.

“They have experience doing this sort of thing,” Jenkins said. “They already collect for the Warren County, Daviess County and a few other county jails.”

County attorney Joe Ross said that since this was new territory for him, he would prefer the court to wait until he looked into the legalities of the issue before making a decision.

He did say that since Hillcrest already handles several other jails that he thought that seemed like the best choice.

“With them handling Warren and Daviess counties, I would feel safer with that experience,” Ross said.

When asked about how far back the jail could collect debts, Jenkins said he was informed that debts could be collected from 2010 through this year.

Jenkins also gave a report about how many inmates were in the jail.

He said that there were 118 total inmates with 85 being from the county and 33 being from the state.

“Historicaly in October and November we wind up picking up more than we do in the summer months,” Jenkins said.