Increase in female inmate population attributed to heroin use
By Jennifer Eberbach
Livingston Daily Press & Argus (Howell)
HOWELL, Mich. (AP) - Chronic overcrowding and an explosion in the female inmate population has led county leaders to expand the Livingston County Jail.
The jail expansion, which began in August 2014, will increase the current 254-bed facility to upwards of 410 beds and it also will help jail administrators target safety issues and staff efficiencies.
"The population has changed," Lt. Tom Cremonte told the Livingston Daily Press & Argus.
Cremonte, who also serves as the county jail administrator, said when he started working at the jail about 12 years ago he remembers housing half a dozen female inmates on a given day, but today that has increased to around 60 female inmates in an area that is designed for 31. With the expansion, the female bed space increases to 80.
Cremonte attributes the increase in the female population to heroin use and availability.
"They are committing crimes that relate to drug usage, like retail fraud, larceny and other crimes they do to pay for drugs," he said.
Jail officials recently guided the Livingston Daily and county officials on a tour of the ongoing construction of the jail expansion, which is a red-box-like structure that has appeared beam by beam and brick by brick in Howell.
The new design is similar to a bicycle wheel with the walls making up the spokes. The spaces in between each spoke are the pods where inmates will be housed. Inmates will be housed in two-stories of stacked prefabricated modular cells made of sound-deadening materials. The housing pods will house either 16-, 32- or 40-beds.
This new cell-pod design will allow administrators to better separate inmates based on their security risk level and improve safety by providing showers directly in the cell as opposed to the current model of sharing a shower facility, which has led to inmates assaulting other inmates.
"No one wants to go into one of the showers because it is kind of isolated," Cremonte said. "There are 57 inmates and two showers in one area. ... Hygiene will improve. Infection rates will go down in the jail. Complaints of lice will go down."
Cremonte added: "You don't want to put a shoplifter in on a first offense together with someone who has a history of violence. It increases the risk of someone getting hurt."
Cremonte said the new cell pod design also will allow jail officials to more easily move inmates between different housing units as new inmates are received into the jail.
The expansion also includes a second "sally port," or entrance/exit which law enforcement uses to transport people into and out of the jail. Adding the second fortified sally port will help improve safety and efficiency because one can be used to transport inmates to court while the other can be used to handle new intakes or releases.
"We're not going to have all that cross-traffic taking place," jail architect Michael Kennedy, of Lindhout Associates, said.
The jail expansion also includes expanding the current medical facilities to include two clinical rooms.
Inmates are expected to be moved into the new cells by October and the jail construction will move into the second phase, which includes creating a special management unit in an area of the existing jail that currently houses female inmates and upgrading the inmate property and evidence rooms as well as technological upgrades to security systems and new body scanners.
The special management unit will be for inmates with behavioral and mental issues, people with special needs, and inmates in protective custody who need to be kept separated from the general population. The second phase should be completed by spring 2016.
The $16.7 million jail expansion is funded through $14.2 million in bonds and $2.5 million from the county's reserve funds.
County Commissioner Dennis Dolan, who chairs the county's construction committee, said he felt confident that the expansion of the jail will alleviate problems.
"It has to be controlled and safe, not only for the inmates, for the individuals working in these areas," Dolan said.
Published: Thu, Jul 02, 2015
