Request By:
Mr. Edward J. Huck
Campbell County Jailer
345 Columbia Street
Newport, Kentucky 41071
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You have the current problem as to the responsibility for transporting the Campbell County jail prisoners to hospitals for treatment. You say you are understaffed and have no means of transporting prisoners to and from the hospitals. You also wrote that the Campbell County Fiscal Court is backing the funding of the Campbell County Jail, and you are at this time approximately $60,000 in the red.
Your question is: Who is responsible for providing for the transportation of jail prisoners to the hospitals, where medical attention is necessary?
KRS 441.010 was amended in 1979 (Ex. Sess., Ch. 21) to provide that if a prisoner in the county jail needs medical care and is a needy person, the unit of goverment whose law is violated by the prisoner shall pay for his "medical expenses." Thus where the prisoner is charged with violating a state statute, the state pays for his medical expenses if he is indigent. If the prisoner is charged with violating a county ordinance, the county must pay for the indigent's medical expenses. However, this statute is geared to "medical care" and "medical expenses". The language of
Neagle v. State Highway Department, Ky., 371 S.W.2d 630 (1963) 632, indicates that the court equates the term "medical" with the practice of medicine, as defined in KRS 311.550. Thus KRS 441.010 contains no express nor implied coverage of "travel expenses" involved in travel from the jail to the hospital and back.
The county jailer has the custody of the prisoners. KRS 71.020. The jailer must, under KRS 71.040, treat the prisoners humanely, which includes, we think, the direct and immediate responsibility for seeing to it that the prisoners get proper medical attention. Thus the county jailer has the immediate responsibility for transporting sick prisoners to the hospital and back. While the prisoner is in a hospital, he is at least in the constructive custody of the county jailer, who had custody of the prisoner in the jail, since the prisoner has not been lawfully discharged. See KRS 71.020 and 71.040. The court, in
Blanks v. Cunningham (U.S.C.A. 4, 1969) 409 F.2d 220, ruled that a prisoner is entitled to reasonable medical care. However, you say that you do not have the staff nor the vehicular means of transporting the sick prisoners from the jail to the hospitals and back.
You could call upon the sheriff's office to transport them, but there is nothing in the statutes requiring them to do that. Cf. KRS 70.130, concerning conveying prisoners to the penitentiary, and 441.500, relating to the sheriff's transporting prisoners to and from detention facilities (from a detention facility to the court and from a detention facility to another detention facility) .
Assuming that you have no available deputy to transport them, and you yourself cannot take them because of your duties at the jail, and you have no vehicular means of transportation, you could call upon the fiscal court to furnish a driver and vehicle for such purpose. Since the county jail involves a county office and a county building (see § 99, Kentucky Constitution, KRS 67.080, and 67.083), and since the law imposes a mandatory burden upon the jailer's office to provide its prisoners with access to reasonable medical attention and care, and since your office does not have the personnel nor vehicle for such transportation, it is our opinion that the courts will not say in effect that the prisoners will just have to stay in jail and either get well or in some cases die. To the contrary, it is our view, in such factual situation, that the county must act to make possible your carrying out your legal duty of seeing to it that the prisoners get medical attention and care. See
Paducah v. McCracken County, 305 Ky. 539, 204 S.W.2d 942 (1947);
Funk v. Milliken, Ky., 317 S.W.2d 499 (1958); and
Barkley v. Gatewood, 285 Ky. 179, 147 S.W.2d 373 (1941).
The ultimate transportation expense for indigent prisoners should be paid out of your excess fees, if available; otherwise, out of the county treasury under a properly budgeted item. The expense for non-indigents should be paid by the prisoners involved. The point is that the courts will not permit the evasion of this responsibility to give the sick prisoners access to medical attention and care.