San Bernardino County sheriff gets approval to seek grant for jail upgrades

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday gave the Sheriff’s Department the green light to apply for an $80 million grant from the state to construct new housing units at the Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center in Devore.

The Sheriff’s Department plans to demolish two housing units at the 53-year-old jail and replace them with three new housing units comprising 512 beds and a visitors’ center. They will accommodate an intensive 18-month education/counseling program to help prepare inmates for life on the outside once they are released from custody.

Design and planning for the $109.9 million project is expected to span throughout 2014, and construction should last three years, from May 2015 to May 2018, according to the grant proposal presented to supervisors.

The Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center, built in 1960 as a maximum security work camp, is the oldest jail in the county and one of nine detention facilities. To accommodate the influx of inmates under Public Safety Realignment, the county has been seeking funding to assist in upgrades at its existing jails and construction of the Adelanto Detention Center, currently under way.

In June 2012, SB 1022 became law. It allowed the state to set aside a $500 million pot for counties to dip into, via application, to assist in jail construction and upgrades necessitated by realignment. The Sheriff’s Department is requesting the $80 million from the pot.

The county will chip in $26 million-plus for the project and another $3.9 million will come from in-kind contributions.

Glen Helen is not the only project under way in the county to increase bed space and improve efficiency. Projects are also under way to expand the Adelanto Detention Center by more than 1,000 beds and to bring some housing units at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Since awarding the Adelanto Detention Center construction contract in December 2010, there have been 20 amendments and change orders to the contract. Initially projected by the county to cost $144 million to build, bids for the project subsequently came in at $120 million, so the budget was adjusted to reflect that amount, county spokesman David Wert said.

Unforeseen glitches in the smoke detection and sprinkler system and other project snafus, however, caused costs to climb, and now the budget is back to $144 million and is not expected to surpass that, Wert said.

The Board of Supervisors also approved Tuesday increasing the budget for the West Valley Detention Center project by $2.3 million, bringing the cost from $2 million to $4.3 million.

The project will bring eight of 15 housing units at the jail into ADA compliance and address accessibility issues in specific inmate cells, showers, day rooms and recreation yards, according to a report prepared for county supervisors.

via http://www.sbsun.com/general-news/20131008/san-bernardino-county-sheriff-gets-approval-to-seek-grant-for-jail-upgrades

Inmate Housing Facilities Planned for California

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) received authorization from 2012 Senate Bill 1022 to begin the process of designing and constructing three new dorm buildings at any of four existing correctional center locations, including California Institute for Men in Chino, California State Prison and Sacramento/Folsom State Prison in Represa, California State Prison and Solano/California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) in Ione or Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. Although planning has started, construction isn’t scheduled to begin until early 2014.

This project is a result of the 2011 state law requiring inmates who are non-violent and who have committed less serious offenses to be housed in local facilities. A restructuring of the classification system for inmates is resulting in a shift in the number of Level II and III inmates as well. “We’re expecting to have 7,000 inmates move from Level III to Level II. We need more beds,” said Dana Simas, information officer at CDCR.

The pending closure of the dilapidated California Rehabilitation Center (CRC) is another factor contributing to the growing need for more Level II inmate beds as those prisoners are transferred to other facilities.

The project is still in the early stages of development, and has several more rounds of planning to go through before any final decisions are made about the location of the new beds, according to Simas. Officials are considering several options for the placement of the facilities, including spreading the three dorm buildings across only two prisons.

Although discussions are still in progress about location and who the general contractor and architect will be, some things are certain. This project will increase the total number of Level II inmate beds in California by 2,376. The cost of building a double housing facility will be $533,792, while a single facility will cost $276,208.

Another perk to the project will be the addition of hundreds of new jobs. A double facility is expected to add 375 additional staff members, and a single facility will add 190. Simas said that the CDCR doesn’t anticipate facing any challenges with the future construction work yet, but did cite factors such as traffic, sewage and environmental elements as potential conflicts in the construction process.

via http://www.correctionalnews.com/articles/2013/07/17/inmate-housing-facilities-planned-california