Santa Rosa County Sheriff Wendall Hall wants to open a work release center that will allow some inmates to earn money to pay back child support and other debts and stave off potential crowding at the county jail.

"A lot of these individuals are being sentenced to jail on reoccurring, minor offenses," Hall told county commissioners Monday morning.

"A lot of these are DUI second offenses. Some of them are third DUIs. Some of them are not paying child support. If you incarcerate them — you lock them up — they lose their job. They can't work," Hall said. "They can't contribute to (addressing) the reason that's causing them to be there in the first place ... because they have no income."

The crime rate is one of 16 metrics on the Studer Community Institute’s Dashboard. Those 16 metrics were developed with the University of West Florida to measure the economic, educational, social well-being and quality of life in the Pensacola metro area.

In Santa Rosa County, the crime rate is 1,296.7 per 100,000 residents. That’s below both the state average of 3,450.7 and Escambia’s 4,760.7, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Hall asked the commission to allow him to open a work release center in a 15,000-square-foot, county-owned building that was formerly occupied by the Department of Juvenile Justice near the county jail in East Milton. That facility has 30 rooms with a capacity of up to six inmates each, along with cafeteria, laundry area and other needed assets.

He anticipates half of the building being used Second Chance Outreach & Re-Entry Education Development — or SCORE — a program for recently released state prisoners that now uses another facility in Milton.

Hall said Goldring Gulf Distributing, a beverage distributor located nearby in the Santa Rosa County Industrial Park, has pledged to employ many of the inmates, although some work release inmates may have existing jobs.

"Some of these people already have good jobs," Hall said. "If they can continue to work, they don't lose them."

Work release inmates would pay a prorated fee based on their income to participate in the program. In Escambia, which has had a work release center since 1984, participants pay a flat $20 per day.

Hall said the work release program's beds would provide a needed expansion of the jail's capacity. Currently, the facility has 663 inmates, with an official capacity of 600. Of those, 101 are Escambia County inmates which Escambia is paying Santa Rosa to house while Escambia County Commissioners decide how to replace its jail.

"We certainly don't want to do anything to disrupt that program. This will give us some relief," he said. "It's not going to be very long before some sheriff will be coming and saying, 'We're overcrowded in our jail.'"

Hall, sheriff since 2000, won't seek re-election next year.

He asked commissioners to allow him to use $300,000 left over from the fiscal 2015 budget — which ended Sept. 30 — to fund the project.

Commissioners' only concern about the project was its potential long-term cost.

"The biggest question I have is, is this going to grow your budget?" Commissioner Bob Cole asked. "You're opening a whole new building. You're going to have a whole new staff. You're going to have an extension of culinary services."

Hall said he believes the $300,000 will be enough to cover the facility's first year, but commissioners asked him to bring them figures on how much it would cost to run on annual basis for their Thursday meeting, when they are expected to make a final decision.

"Hopefully, it will get to the point where it pays for itself," Hall said. "It's also taking pressure off the jail, and it's keeping those inmates from sitting up watching TV all day, not giving back to the community."

Escambia's work release center, located on West Fairfield Drive near the Escambia County Jail, can house more 300 inmates at a time. From October 2014 to September 2015, 464 inmates participated in that program.

Escambia's program funds itself; there is about $946,000 budgeted for the program for next year in the county's budget. Pathways for Change, a nonprofit that offers counseling and job skills training for people with addiction issues, operates a program in the work release center for inmates who qualify for that program.

The County pays Pathways for Change $140,000 a year, but also pays a little over $160,000 to the work release center to cover their housing. Pathways for Change inmates don’t pay any fees, the County pays them.