The state of JCSO: Overdoses decline, detention center at max capacity
The Jackson County detention center is more than 20 years old.
Jackson County Sheriff Doug Farmer gave his annual report to his county commissioners last week, and while overdose deaths have declined dramatically, the agency is facing difficulties housing inmates in a crowded jail.
“First of all, I want to thank all the staff at the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office for the hard work and sacrifices they make,” Farmer said during his March 4 presentation. “I couldn’t do it without them, and I’m very appreciative of the people I have around me and surround me each and every day to do the job. I appreciate what you guys do for us and all the county staff.”
The sheriff’s office has experienced challenges over the past year with a detention center that is regularly at capacity. The detention center in Jackson County was built more than 20 years ago and has never had more space added. It only has capacity for eight female prisoners. According to Farmer, the need for female capacity has increased drastically since the center was constructed.
There are 72 total beds in the facility. Of those, 59 are male beds, eight are female and five are holding beds. The state does not recognize holding beds as official capacity, which reduces the facility to a total occupancy of 67.
“Whenever we’re talking occupancy, some of these individuals, if they’re violent individuals, if we have problems with them or what not, they may occupy one cell, which would be a cell that could house two [people], but because they’re violent or out of control or something, we only have one in there,” Farmer said. “That reduces our numbers in our holding capacity there.”
Farmer said that the department tries to get the courts to move people out as quickly as possible.
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“Some of these folks would probably stay longer if we had the capacity for that, but right now we don’t,” Farmer said. “If you ask me the number of beds we need for the next 20 years, I’d say 40 more beds.”
Jackson County is currently working on an addition to the detention center, but plans are not advanced enough to know how many additional beds the expansion will accommodate.
As of March 4, there were 80 people housed in the Jackson County Detention Center.
“We had prisoners sleeping on the floor,” said Farmer.
The county is also paying to house overflow inmates in other counties, currently Henderson and Transylvania. Farmer estimated the cost to house an individual inmate in another county and transport that person back and forth for court dates to be about $10,000 per month.
As of March 4, there were five Jackson County inmates housed in Henderson County, and as many as five others in Transylvania County. According to Farmer, there are two or three others in the Jackson County Detention Center that have been there for a year, a few that have been there for almost two years and some that have been there as long as three years.
“We’re housing people longer,” Farmer said. “But like I said, we’re going to have to have help from the courts. We’re going to need more court dates because we had court this past week, we won’t have criminal court again for three weeks.”
Farmer said that most of the longer detention center stays can be explained by a backlog in the court system, but some capital offenses just take a while to get in order. Others are in-depth cases, with a laundry list of charges.
Patrol calls have risen steadily over the past three years, increasing from 15,677 in 2022 to 17,424 in 2023 and 18,653 in 2024.
“As our population increases, our calls are increasing, and some of our calls are getting more complex,” said Farmer.
Census reports estimate that the population of Jackson County has increased by just over 1,000 people between 2021 and 2023, from 43,410 to 44,574. This does not account for the high number of tourists regularly visiting Jackson County.
Farmer also told commissioners that the department has revamped its color scheme, opting for shades of green and black, rather than the previous black and white.
According to Farmer, school resource officers are one of the department’s most valued assets.
“They bridge a gap between the general public, students and law enforcement,” Farmer said. “School resource officers are more than just a badge in the hallway, they’re a trusted presence, a guiding voice and a safety net for our students, always ready to listen and support.”
In addition to regular operations, school resource officers and other sheriff’s office staff work about 280 school events each year. Farmer said that after school resource officers work the normal eight-hour school day, many will remain on campus until 5 p.m., even though they aren’t paid for the extra time.
“They will stay until five, and then they will work ball games in addition to that,” Farmer said. “There’s a lot asked of these men and women. They sacrifice their family time, they sacrifice personal time in order to help at the schools and stuff, so if you see one of them, please, please tell them thank you for the job that they do. I want to try to do as much as possible for them as I can because they are truly a valuable asset for us.”
Fraud and scam reports have fluctuated over the years, declining somewhat overall. In 2022, there were 130 fraud and scam reports, which dropped to 99 in 2023, and increased to 101 in 2024. Farmer says that these issues always ramp up during tax season.
Assaults and investigations increased significantly in 2024 with 455 recorded, compared to 336 in 2022 and 349 in 2023.
“I could not tell you what the cause of that is, but we have answered a lot of domestic type calls, and some serious assault calls this year,” Farmer said. “So hopefully that will go down this coming year.”
In 2024 the sheriff’s office conducted 89 forensic interviews and investigated 20 cases involving internet crimes against children.
The department deployed its drone operations five times in 2024 resulting in three arrests, and Farmer says that it has already deployed its drone operations three or four times in 2025.
“They’re invaluable; if we have a missing person’s case, and we’re going out looking, the drones get deployed immediately to try and track the person if we can,” Farmer said. “[They have] thermal capability, infrared, and spotlight capability so we would deploy those and get those up in the air as quickly as we can.”
Civil processes and court services fell slightly from 1,707 in 2023 to 1,627 in 2024.
“Part of the reason for that is the new system that the clerk’s office has now, some of those services are mailed out so we don’t get those services in house now,” Farmer said.
Records of courthouse visitors are inaccurate for 2024, coming in at only 19,806 compared to 35,556 in 2023, due to a broken counter.
“The counter is broke, so we’re going to have to replace the counter,” Farmer said. “We looked at January and February and January was almost 6,000 people that visited us, a little over 270 people per day. In February there were 10,000. It’s like 571 per day, coming in and out of the courthouse. So there is a lot of traffic.”
Because courthouse security spends so much time scanning people’s bags as they enter, Farmer said that the sheriff’s office is considering implementing a size restriction on what bags people can bring into the courthouse.
“Bags have been a big issue for us, so we’re looking at maybe trying to change that and do away with any big bags, only small bags come through, so it takes a lot out of the scan portion of that,” said Farmer.
Community outreach remains important for the sheriff’s office with programs like the Safe Schools Task Force, D.A.R.E., senior center Christmas box delivery, Special Olympics, back to school bash, emergency services committee and shop with a cop.
The Safe Schools Task Force is headed up by Captain Tony Cope and works to coordinate with schools and other agencies within the county to improve response time and understanding within schools about what to do in an emergency.
The sheriff’s office is aiming to raise $10,000 this year for the Special Olympics through a t-shirt sale.
“We want to help these children as much as we can; it’s a great program and we enjoy attending that every year,” Farmer said.
The sheriff’s office puts on the back to school bash each year together with Jackson County Public Schools as a place for students and families to access resources before the school year begins, with everything from school supplies to haircuts available for attendees.
The emergency services committee meets quarterly and allows different emergency service departments to convene and share relevant information and resources that cross over between agencies.
“The DWI task force is something we’ve been doing since I took office, and it’s a great program,” Farmer said. “They’ve got some legislation that they’re trying to push through, wanting to go to a .05 [legal blood alcohol concentration for driving]. It’s been a long time since .08 was enacted, and I would love to see a .05 come to North Carolina; make our roadways safer.”
Narcotics enforcement has been a priority for Farmer since he was elected to office in 2022. One of the narcotics investigators in Jackson County Sheriff’s Office is assigned to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration task force as a task force officer.
“That allows us to cross over with state cases into federal cases on the DEA side and allows us to seize funds and equipment through the federal system,” said Farmer. “We also have an additional narcotics investigator assigned to the Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives task force as a task force officer. Same thing there, if we’re dealing with guns, drugs, it allows us to seamlessly cross over to the federal side of that.”
In 2024, the office charged 1,176 total felony drug offenses and had 410 drug-related arrests. During that year, it seized 231.09 grams of crack cocaine, 238.08 grams of cocaine, 790 grams of fentanyl and heroin and 2,832.76 grams of methamphetamine.
“I can tell you there’s a lot more to come; we’re not done yet. We’re aggressive with our drug enforcement; we’ll continue to be aggressive with it because we are a corridor,” said Farmer. “There’s a lot comes through here, so we’re constantly trying to train these guys and learn them how to post it quicker, how to get this stuff off the streets before it makes it into the hands of the dealers here and makes it to individual users.”
The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office currently has two canines that assist two narcotics investigators and plans to add a third this year. It had 34 canine deployments in 2023 and 130 deployments in 2024, which led to 13 and 65 arrests respectively.
Overdoses in the county have dropped dramatically over the last three years with the sheriff’s department responding to 189 overdoses in 2022, which resulted in 60 death, 156 overdoses in 2023, which resulted in 38 deaths and 99 overdoses in 2024 which led to five deaths.
“I want to thank you on the overdoses, that’s big,” said Commissioner Todd Bryson. “Seeing those families lose a loved one to overdose, it’s said to see. So, we appreciate you when it comes to that.”
Not all of those overdoses related to illicit drugs like meth, fentanyl or cocaine. Some are accidental overdoses by people taking too much of a prescribed medication.
“We will never arrest our way out of this crisis, we must have help from our court system,” said Farmer. “For example, stiffer consequences, longer mandatory sentences and drug court. We need help. We can arrest them all day and we will, and we’ll continue if they get released and get back out on the street and do the same thing again, we’ll arrest them again. But we have to have the help from our court system.”
