Cook County jail administrator Ben Hallberg gave three public tours of the Cook County law enforcement center last week and those who attended any one of those had to come away with the feeling that at least some of the areas needed to be expanded or upgraded. No question about that. I attended the Friday, March 8 tour with three other people.
There was one person in the jail on Friday, and as visitors through the jail, we weren’t allowed to see the person or have contact with the inmate.
Does Cook County need a $5 million expansion? And should the county move to a Class 3 jail facility? Those are questions the public has been asking, especially in light of a consultant study that recommended the county move to a larger, Class 3 facility.
This designation would allow prisoners to be held in the county for up to one year, but also comes with mandates that add to the initial cost of construction because of the need for more staff, more programs, and more maintenance.
Current law enforcement center
Opened in 1998, one year before the jail in Grand Marais was closed, the Cook County Jail has five individual holding cells. These are used to house first appearance and pre-trial inmates who can be held up to 72 hours (excluding weekends and holidays).
The facility also has a 10-bed Work Release/Huber cell for inmates serving a community service (STS) or Huber sentence for up to one year. This area is able to house adult male and female offenders. Hallberg said for a variety of reasons juvenile offenders are not housed in the county jail unless for a short time until they can be sent to a juvenile detention center in St. Louis County.
When the city of Grand Marais closed its jail, and the county agreed through a paid arrangement to cover the city’s police work, the city’s six holding cells were lost. That loss of jail space wasn’t anticipated when the new law enforcement center was built, said Hallberg.
Class 3 jail
Currently, Cook County is only one of three Minnesota counties that doesn’t operate a Class 3 law enforcement center. The nearest Class 3 jail is in Two Harbors. Then it’s 106 miles to St. Louis County Jail, and many more miles to go to Aitkin or one of the other jails Cook County prisoners are transferred to so they can serve out their court sentence.
That’s a lot miles for deputies to transport prisoners. It’s also a lot of miles and cost for families to go and visit the inmates, who traditionally are young people who have issues with anger, alcohol/drugs or mental health.
Some county jails are medium/maximum security jails.
Cass County has a 60-bed facility that is currently running above maximum capacity. The jail holds both male and female prisoners for up to one year. Inmates that qualify can work out of the jail or within the jail or be placed on Sentence to Service crews. Additionally, besides supervising prisoners within the Cass County jail, the staff also provides prisoner transports and courtroom security.
The jail is managed by a jail administrator, a corrections/jail STS, Huber day-to-day administrator, eight fulltime jailers, four part-time jailers, two transport officers, and one STS crew leader.
Marshall, Minn., is dropping its Class 3 status and going to a 90-day lock-up. One of the reasons for the move is because the state has said the jail has to add 600 more square feet of indoor space, a cost the county doesn’t want to bear.
Transportation cost
Cost to transport prisoners to Class 3 jails is one of the biggest reasons why the county has looked at expanding its law enforcement center.
In 2015 the county spent $220,600; 2016, $141,200; 2017, $111,000; and in 2018 through 11 months, $90,000.
But over the last three years, as fewer prisoners have had to be sent away, transportation costs have dropped dramatically, and again, many people in public have wondered why there is a need to expand.
Also, only 25 percent of the people jailed are from Cook County.
The consultant the county hired was Wold Architects and Engineers, who, if the law enforcement center is upgraded to Class 3, would also be the architect for the project.
Despite the steady drop in prisoners since 2015, the study submitted by Wold predicts the Cook County jail will average 14 inmates per day in 2020. It’s a number that has some people scratching their heads over. It’s a big jump from the average of two to three prisoners a 2016 Arrowhead Regional Development Center (ARDC) study of the Cook County jail found.
How is that possible? Hallberg was asked.
Ben answered there are different ways to count inmate days. “Say we arrest someone for drunk driving at 8 p.m. We have to hold those people for 12 hours, so we would release them at 8 a.m. the next morning. The [Minnesota Department of Corrections] DOC counts that as .5 days. I count that as two days.”
Hallberg went on to explain that ever since the law enforcement center started using the Zuckerberg (computer) system, they might not have been tabulating the prisoner days correctly. “Valerie (Marasco) is going through that right now to check to make sure we have our numbers right,” he said.
Current plans drawn up by Wold show the building doubling in space to 18,419 square feet, with 30 beds, a two-stall garage, larger work rooms for officers and space for inmates to exercise in, among other upgrades that include video transmission visits with inmates from the inmate’s cells.
Improvements needed
If the law enforcement center isn’t upgraded to a Class 3 facility, the windows, which leak air, will still have to be replaced. And several rooms, including a tiny conference room, and the lunch room where evidence is brought out and gone over (even bloodstained evidence) could be looked at for redesign, and the sally port (garage), where the police transport van is parked sideward so it can fit, should be made bigger or newer vehicles that are purchased need to be smaller.
Should the nod go towards expansion, added on would be a kitchen, larger lunchroom, two dayrooms (workout/exercise equipment would be included), 10 more cells, more massive two-stall garage, a medical room where prisoners can be taken for preliminary physical/mental exams or shots, if so needed, as well as video conference visit areas, and expanded dispatch area, among other things.
Workers
Hallberg was asked if more than one dispatcher would have to be on duty if the move to Class 3 happens. He responded by stating that a jailer and dispatcher would both have to be on duty at all times, with both trained to cover the other person and share each other’s responsibilities if necessary.
All told, at least four full-time employees would have to be added to run the facility, and counselors would have to be available on contract through the clinic, Cook County Public Health and Human Services (PHHS), or an independent counselor under private contract.
A public meeting will be held on Thursday, March 21 at 6 p.m. in the commissioners’ room at the courthouse. There will be a time for questions and answers following a presentation, said Hallberg.
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