Blog note: this article references a 2016-17 grand jury report.
The Union Democrat went on a tour of the facility Wednesday morning to see the progress since construction began a little over a year ago, though work behind the scenes to bring the project to this point has spanned the past two decades.
“I’ve worked here for 27 years and didn’t think this would happen,” said Jail Operations Sgt. Eric Roberts, of the county Sheriff’s Office.
The project is anticipated to be fully completed in January.
Roberts said the new jail, located at the county’s Law and Justice Center across Highway 108 from Walmart in Sonora, will provide better safety and improved conditions for both jail inmates and staff than the existing one on Yaney Avenue.
At about 63,000 square feet, the new jail will be nearly double the size of the current three-story cement structure that was built in the early 1960s and added onto several times through the early 1990s.
Part of the problem with the old jail is that there’s no more space for additions because it’s surrounded by a residential neighborhood.
There’s going to be room for up to 230 inmates at the new jail, compared to 147 at the old one, which has to release inmates early at times due to being consistently full.
The new jail is split up into two separate pods each contain four housing units and two yards. Most of the inmates at the current jail are confined to one portion of the second floor, which a previous Civil Grand Jury investigation found to be overcrowded and understaffed.
Jail deputies will be able to keep a better eye on what’s happening in each of the housing units from a control room located in the center of the pods.
“This is going to make it so much safer for both the inmates and staff,” Roberts said.
Deputies will also be able to electronically lock and unlock doors from the control rooms to allow for easier movement of inmates. Most of the doors at the current jail are manually controlled.
Each yard at the new jail will be connected to two housing units, which Roberts said will allow them to give inmates more time in the yard than they currently do.
The yard at the current jail is located on the roof of the building, which makes transporting inmates to and from their cells more time consuming and labor intensive. State law requires each inmate to be given up to three hours of yard time per week.
“The main thing is we won’t have to move them to the yards,” Roberts said.
Accommodations for jail staff will also be an improvement. Offices for some deputies at the old jail are located in former storage closets that don’t have temperature controls.
The 2016-17 Grand Jury report noted that access to the female locker room on the bottom floor of the current jail can only be made by walking through the male locker room, which is also used for employee training.
Roberts said there will also be more secure parking for staff because it won’t be located within a residential neighborhood like the current jail.
There have also been numerous plumbing issues at the current jail observed by the Grand Jury over the years. The 2015-16 report noted overhead plumbing leaks in the staff locker rooms that were being captured by tarps and funneled into containers, which were emptied by inmates.
A previous report by the Grand Jury stated the old jail could best be described as a “building in arrested decay.”
Work toward building a new county jail has been ongoing since at least 2000, when a new Sheriff’s Office complex was proposed.
The plans later expanded into a Law and Justice Center that would also include a new courthouse, juvenile hall, transit center, and offices for the sheriff, district attorney, public defender, probation department, grand jury, and private attorneys.
In 2009, the county purchased 48 acres of land from the Gardella family for about $4 million.
The $20 million Mother Lode Regional Juvenile Detention Facility, funded mostly by a $16 million state grant, was completed and opened in 2017. A $2 million transit center also opened at the center later that year.
Funding for about $33 million of the jail’s construction costs comes from two state grants, while the rest is being financed by the county through lease-revenue bonds that will be paid off over 30 years.
Deputy County Administrator Maureen Frank, who has been involved with the Law and Justice Center’s development since the early 2000s, said she’s scheduled to seek permission from the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to hire an architectural firm to craft a proposal for constructing offices.
Funding for the offices has yet to be identified.
A needs assessment conducted in 2011 as part of the process to acquire the grants for construction determined that the jail needed 208 beds at the time and projected it would need 240 by 2018.
Lt. Tamara McCaig, jail commander for the Sheriff’s Office, said land was set aside to build an extra pod in the future if funding becomes available. The design that’s being constructed is a scaled back version of a previous $80 million proposal.
June 28, 2019
The Union Democrat
By Alex MacLean
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