Only in Kentucky: Jailers Without Jails
By: R.G. Dunlop and Jacob Ryan
January 2, 2015
CHAVIES, Ky.--Jeanette Miller Hughes padded barefoot around her modest home on a recent weekday afternoon, wearing a stained, baggy shirt and leggings. The television blared “The Muppets” as Hughes babysat her grandchild.
During this and two other weekday stops by reporters at Hughes’ home, there was nothing to suggest that this well-compensated public official was on the clock and ready to tackle her duties as Perry County’s jailer. Indeed, each time her county-owned Mercury SUV sat in the driveway.
Since being elected four years ago, Hughes has done very little as the county’s $69,000-a-year jailer.
She doesn’t even have an office, no place where she goes to work all day, every weekday. Nor does she have any regular responsibilities, despite her hefty paycheck. And hardly anyone seems to have noticed, or cared.
Hughes is the personification of a wasteful, nepotism-laced but little-discussed system that costs Kentucky taxpayers approximately $2 million annually. She is one of 41 elected county jailers across the state who don’t have jails to run. And she is the highest paid of them all.
Only in Kentucky does this curious practice exist. As a result of it, one of the nation’s poorest states is slightly poorer still, because of its outdated, wasteful system of no-jail jailers, an inquiry by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting has found.
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