MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Ladarius Berry has spent the better part of the last decade in a cell.
He was convicted more than a year ago after arriving inside the Shelby County Jail in January 2015.
Berry has yet to be picked up from the jail, more commonly referred to as 201 Poplar, by Tennessee Department of Corrections officials.
He doesn't know why.
"They've been keeping people in jail, trying to get people to do their time down here," Berry told ABC24. "It's crazy down here in this jail. They said they're not coming to pick anyone up with a year or less [to serve in prison]."
He's not alone.
There are at least 10 more people in his pod at the jail also waiting to be picked up by TDOC officials, Berry said.
Berry has called TDOC frequently to check on how much time he has left because he has been in 201 Poplar for so long.
Time served moves faster inside of state facilities than in local jails, so things such as good behavior would allow individuals to serve their sentence at a faster rate.
"The jail can't tell you nothing about your time," Berry said. "My folks have been calling to see what's going on but they don't answer the phone.
"I've been waiting on my time since November, some people have been waiting a whole year for them. They've been letting people out from right here."
“THERE’S A PROBLEM”
Former Shelby County Sheriff Mark Luttrell said this was never a problem in Shelby County to his memory, but it has been in parts of the state.
"This is the first time I've ever heard of us having a problem with Shelby County inmates, and that means one or two things," Lutrell said. "They either are just at capacity in the state system and they just can't take them, or there's some other policy issue that has run afoul, but that's very uncommon.
"It's not in some of the smaller areas of the state, smaller counties of the state. I've heard of it being more common. So it's a concern."
Luttrell said in his past role, those who had been convicted were typically held for a small period of days before being sent to prison systems, unless there was something holding up the process, like an additional court hearing.
"If it's happening, there's a problem," Luttrell said.
Tennessee Department of Corrections officials responded to ABC24’s request for information with a single sentence, saying, “TDOC inmates housed in local jails are regularly reviewed for transfer.”
SCSO OFFICIALS SEEK ANSWERS
SCSO Chief Deputy Anthony Buckner said the department has been trying to figure out what is happening in the system to have TDOC speed up transfers.
"We are in conversations and communications with them quite often, letting them know who's ready to be picked up," Buckner said. "Now we don't really know what happens on the backside of that, in terms of how much spacing they have when they're going to come and get them, how many they want to come and get this week, I think they got about four or five inmates.
In September, 201 Poplar had roughly 150 inmates that were considered ready to be moved to state facilities. SCSO asked the state to get 65 of them, but state officials only picked up 15 of those individuals, Buckner said.
Buckner said that there are currently 140 individuals waiting for transfers to TDOC facilities.
"We would take 140 inmates to a state penitentiary if they would accept them, the four or five inmates that they come get every other week or every week," Buckner said. "That helps, but it's a thimble. I mean, it doesn't even speak to the number of people we really need them to move out of our facility."
ABC24 found at least 10 people who have been in jail since 2015-2018 with cases closed and sentenced. Some have waited almost two years, but still haven’t been picked up and remain in 201 Poplar.
The cost of housing those individuals is roughly $100 per day per individual, and the state only reimburses $39 per day per individual, Buckner said.
The issue is costing Shelby County officials millions.
"That's more of the reason why we really want them to move out of our system, so we can save local tax dollars and that we can get more inmates onto the floors," Buckner said. "What I can tell you is that a majority [of] inmates prefer to be in the state penitentiary setting versus a jail."
Buckner said most individuals want to go to the state facilities because of the additional rehabilitation programs available versus in the local facility.
"Services or training like auto mechanic or HVAC, those programs are better suited for a state penitentiary setting, because when those inmates arrive at that facility, they know that they're going to be there three years or five years, whereas with us, we don't necessarily know that," Buckner said.
"So it's challenging for us to give them the appropriate rehabilitation services so they want to go."
Buckner said SCSO officials have been in conversation with a few state legislators to see if they can add pressure at the state level to move people into state facilities.
"All we can do right now is make the phone calls and raise the alarm on the issue," Buckner said. "We need the available space. We're seeing a lot of inmates coming to our jail. Maybe three or four months ago, we were seeing an average population of about 2,100 inmates.
"Now we're hovering consistently above 2,500 inmates."
KENTUCKY FACED SIMILAR ISSUES
Tennessee isn’t the only state facing the issue, and Shelby County isn't the only local jail having this occur.
Buckner said multiple counties throughout the state are asking for the same type of consideration in moving people to state facilities.
"While Shelby County may have the largest jail in the state, we're not necessarily number one when it comes to picking up inmates," Buckner said. "So this issue [is] not unique to our county or our sheriff, but certainly we probably have the majority or larger number of inmates than smaller counties would."
The same problem became such an issue in Kentucky that county jails sued the state over not picking up those who had been convicted.
In Kentucky, county jails were on the hook for costs that typically would have been covered by the state, but they were never reimbursed.
By 2023, 44 percent of Kentucky’s jail population was supposed to be in state facilities.
In May 2024, Franklin Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate ruled that the Kentucky Department of Corrections had failed to meet its statutory obligations for transfer of state inmates out of county jails and did not adequately cover the costs of medical care.
Medical care in jails has been a topic of discussion for years, particularly regarding 201 Poplar.
At least 67 people have died while in SCSO custody since 2016, many of which were due to poor health.
Berry said that while he has been inside, he has struggled with receiving proper medication.
During reporting for this story, Berry’s family were notified that he had finally been picked up and sent to the Bledsoe County Correctional Complex.
