The newly expanded Kings County Jail is nearing completion, solving the facility’s ongoing shortage of space for inmates and staff.
After AB-109 prison realignment went into effect on Oct. 1, 2011, the jail was inundated with nonviolent offenders who would otherwise have served their sentences in state prisons. In 2012, a whopping 990 inmates were released early due to crowding, compared with 31 the previous year.
“Right now we’ve got about 450 inmates between the two facilities,” Kings County Sheriff Dave Robinson said. “We had as many as 600 right after realignment. These bunk beds were all full. As this expansion opens up, we’ll remove the majority of these bunk beds.”
Robinson said the jail had just 361 beds when he first took office in 2011. The extra inmates required setting up bunk beds and reopening the former branch jail. The main jail was built in 2006.
Those figures helped the county land $33 million of AB-900 state funding in 2013 to expand the jail. That same year, the county also secured $20 million through SB-1022 for a 24-bed mental health unit.
“When these projects are all done we’ll house about 637 inmates,” Robinson said.
Robinson said the expansion project is scheduled for completion by the end of May. The mental health unit is expected to break ground later this year.
Once the expansion is complete, inmates will be moved from the branch jail back to the main jail. Robinson said the branch jail will be converted back into a juvenile facility.
Assistant Sheriff Robert Thayer said the jail had just seven early releases in 2015. There have been no early releases so far this year. Thayer said the expansion will add about 60,000 square feet of space, nearly doubling the current facility.
“What we’ve been doing for the last four years is just stopping the bleeding,” Thayer said. “Now it’s getting into the intricate surgery to get it lined up for years to come.”
Thayer said the new housing areas will allow jail staff to better monitor and control inmate activity, such as remotely opening doors.
“The control room will be able to buzz the door to the yard area, and an inmate can go into the yard without a staff member having to come open the door,” Robinson said. “Part of it is that we want it to be more efficient and have less staff requirements for inmate movement.”
Other features will include new facilities for laundry, food preparation, as well as medical and dental care.
Thayer said food is currently cooked at the branch jail and trucked over to the main jail. Laundry has to be boxed up and taken to the branch jail for cleaning. Thayer said the new medical suite includes five medical examination rooms and a triage room. The dental suite has two work stations.
Robinson said AB-109 increased the number of long-term inmates in the jail, which increased the need to provide preventative care such as regular dental and medical examinations.
“This is a true medical suite area,” Robinson said. “The original medical area wasn’t even built for medical. It was built for office space.”
Robinson said the new facilities for food preparation, laundry and inmate property storage have been designed to serve up to 1,500 inmates as the jail continues to grow over the next 20 years.
“It’s built to accommodate more inmates than we have because we didn’t want to expand again later on,” Robinson said.
The construction also includes a new underground tunnel connecting the jail to the new Kings County courthouse.
Robinson said the original plans for the jail expansion placed the underground tunnel connecting the jail to the new Kings County Courthouse at the east end of the jail. The tunnel would have required an elevator to access it. The final design used a gradual ramp to descend into the tunnel.
“That cut about $800,000 out of our project,” Robinson said. “That was a huge change for us and, obviously, saved the taxpayers a bunch of money.”
There are eight holding cells on the jail side of the tunnel to hold up to 64 inmates on their way to and from the courthouse. Robinson said the tunnel extends about 400 feet to a pair of elevators at the other end where inmates can be taken to and from the custody area of the courthouse.
In addition to adding more room for inmates, jail staff will also gain some much-needed space.
Many of the offices in the current administration building are converted closets. Employees like Thayer, whose current office is in a former janitor’s closet with remnants of a ladder used for roof access, will get a new office.
The new staff entry area will include employee locker rooms and shower facilities. Robinson said employees currently lack space to store equipment and belongings, or change into and out of their uniforms at work.
When funding becomes available, Robinson said, the sheriff’s office operations will move from its current location on Lacey Boulevard, built in 1964, to the area just east of the jail. Robinson said his department will include money in the 2016-17 budget to design the facility and determine how much it will cost to build.
“When we get the money to build the new sheriff’s operations center, we’ll move everything over and it will connect right here,” Robinson said.
The old sheriff’s building is slated for eventual demolition to provide additional parking for the county’s behavioral health department, health department and fire department administration offices, which will be moving into the former courthouse at the government center.
Robinson said the mental health unit and the jail expansion will cost about $65 million combined when complete.
