RIVERTON (WTE) — Fremont County’s jail population is down to 116 inmate s — roughly half its New Year’s total.

The Fremont County Detention Center suffered from overcrowding for at least three seasons prior to the coronavirus pandemic. Its current low numbers are due to restructuring of court processes locally amid exposure concerns, which were exacerbated by the threat of a crowded jail — and by a changing criminal element.

Fremont County Sheriff Ryan Lee called the decrease a relief.

“Obviously it frees up space, and it lessens the stress on employees,” Lee said, emphasizing that an outbreak in the jail would impact inmates, deputy sheriffs and associated staff who work in the jail — and the taxpayer as well.

In the event of an outbreak, non-hospitalized inmates would be quarantined within the jail. Staff members would be sent to their homes.

Lee’s office for months had negotiated deals with other jails, arranged home confinement and juggled other solutions to the longtime overcrowding, often with cost complications of normal incarceration expenses.

During the week of March 23, the jail volume dropped from 187 to 155 inmates — then an unheard-of low for five years. Numbers kept plunging, to a 15-year-low of 116 on Wednesday, just three months after mid-winter spikes of 210.

The numbers continue to plunge because of altered court processes, but also because local courts and police are being “careful about whom we’re taking into custody,” said Fremont County Attorney Patrick LeBrun.

He noted that courts take “extreme care to only keep people in jail that we feel are clearly, presently dangerous, or are charged with felonies.”

Fremont County Public Defender Jonathan Gerard clarified the heightened law enforcement discretion, saying the jail has continued to empty because of both limited responses and a drop in some violent crimes.

“They’re pretty much only arresting for violent crimes, and there haven’t been, almost, any,” Gerard said Wednesday.