Barren County Jailer Aaron Shirley opens bids for an online inmate tracking system during a special-called meeting of the Barren County Fiscal Court Jail Committee on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025. Will Perkins/Glasgow News 1
By WILL PERKINS
Glasgow News 1
The Barren County Detention Center may be getting a new online inmate tracking system.
Members of the Barren County Fiscal Court Jail Committee met for a special-called meeting Wednesday morning and opened bids for the jail’s online system, eventually voting to recommend Cadmus to the full fiscal court at its next meeting.
Barren County Jailer Aaron Shirley said the jails in Hart and Allen counties use Cadmus to track their inmates, and he has been very impressed with the system.
“There are several jails around here that are using this,” Shirley said. “They do have the safeguards that I wanted.”
After discussing the bids — which included ones from Jail Tracker for $12,804 per year; BluHorse for $21,700 per year; and Cadmus for $12,000 per year after a $5,000 initial setup — Committee Chair Tim Durham and committee members Marty Kinslow and Tim Coomer all voted to recommend Cadmus.
All bids except for Cadmus’ required a five-year contract, which Shirley and the committee members said they wanted to avoid.
“If for some reason somebody else winds up in my seat (as jailer), I’d hate for somebody else to be stuck in something,” Shirley said.
The jail, which is located in Glasgow, currently uses Jail Tracker to publicly track inmates. Shirley said although the company is made up of good people, there have been many issues using their system, which is why he wants to switch to Cadmus.
“I’m not against Jail Tracker as far as the people. There are some good people that work there,” Shirley said. “I think they just got left behind with the technology side.
“I just don’t think they’ve invested back in the company to supply the needs that we have.”
Before the vote to approve the recommendation, Shirley and committee members said they appreciated all of the bids.
“I liked how every one of them presented their business very well,” Durham said. “Very professional and it was all done very well.”
Currently, the next Barren County Fiscal Court meeting where the committee’s recommendation will be brought up and discussed is Oct. 21 at 9 a.m.
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