Coweta County's

prisoners may soon be helping to pay for their incarceration.

That's the

word from Sheriff Mike Yeager, who got the green light Tuesday night from

the Coweta County Commission to pursue a program to provide money back

to the county for inmates' costs while in jail.

Yeager said

the program is run by Justice Benefits, a company that does a monthly

census of the county's prisoners.

If the prisoners

have been in jail at least a month, the company determines whether the

inmate is receiving any funds, such as Social Security payments, that

can be given to the county to help pay for the inmate's stay in prison.

Yeager said

the prisoners are not supposed to be receiving any funds while in jail,

so the program is totally legal and would provide a revenue source to

the county to pay for increasing costs at the jail.

"We have

to pay for food and medical costs, which are really going up," Yeager

said.

Yeager said

any funds realized would go back into the county's general funds and not

the sheriff's budget.

Commissioner

Robert Wood did not like the idea.

"I'm not

ready to put any more burdens on families just because somebody has made

a mistake," he said.

But Commission

Chairman Vernon "Mutt" Hunter said the funds never get to the

family members.

"That

check should go back to the county. This is not taking anything away from

the dependents," he said.

Hunter then

moved to approve the program after getting more information from the company

that would administer it. In his motion, he made it clear that he wanted

the program to follow the strict guidelines of the law and for no funds

to be taken away from dependents.

The motion

passed 4-0-1 count, with Wood abstaining because he said he did not know

enough about the program and wanted to make sure that families weren't

hurt.