Dylan Reubenking / dylanr@chronline.com
An issue in Thurston County that was on the minds of county commissioners well before the current board members took office has begun to resurface.
The county has grappled with growing inmate capacity in its jail over the past decade, as current Chair Commissioner Tye Menser presented during a Wednesday, April 23, board work session. Concerns about the overcrowded jail were brought up by Sheriff Derek Sanders in February, and the board approved the assembly of a work group between stakeholders and the board to search for viable, yet short-term solutions.
Sanders said in February, “It just feels like we’re one step away from being sued on this issue,” citing that the jail didn’t have enough space for those with mental illnesses, sex offenders or highly violent offenders.
Menser said multiple jail expansion ballot measures were rejected by voters before the Great Recession. In August 2015, the county moved detention functions from the courthouse jail, also referred to as the “old jail,” to the Accountability & Restitution Center (ARC). The ARC was planned to be built in two phases. Phase 1, which was built from 2008 to 2010, was designed to house about 350 inmates, but occupancy sometimes exceeded 500, according to a board briefing from Sept. 22, 2016.
The document stated that the most critical need then was for specialized and high-security cells, which is the same need that Sanders has called for recently. Menser said Phase 2 of the ARC, called the flex unit, would have built more specialized cells, but a couple of factors increased the need around the time he joined the board in 2019.
“It wasn’t a terrible idea at the time, but what happened was criminal justice reform ideas started to take hold, and we started working on diversion program and different ways to get folks that were a lower level, low risk to the community out of sitting in jail,” Menser said. “Meanwhile, the mental health population and problems in the community were rising. Those two things conflated to change the structure of our jail population. We already needed the flex unit, but as time went on, we more and more needed the flex unit.”
In October 2019, the board was given nine options to address their jail space needs. These options included:
• A full flex unit with 120 beds
• A smaller flex unit with 40 beds, which was chosen by the commissioners
• A complete overhaul of the old jail
• A partial overhaul of the old jail
• Converting the juvenile jail into an “offshoot” of the primary jail and building a smaller juvenile facility
• Remodeling a pod of the juvenile jail
• Renovating a pod of the existing jail and creating single cells, which is referred to as the Charlie unit
• Renovate and repurpose the work release facility
• Constructing a modular unit in existing jail
Menser said the board chose to build the smaller flex unit with 40 beds for a cost of around $28 million, while simultaneously choosing to design the full build-out for an additional $4 million design cost. He added that he and former Commissioner Gary Edwards were hesitant to embark on a large-scale expansion of the jail, but voted to move forward after numerous debates.
“That’s what was happening at the end of 2019, and then in the beginning of 2020, COVID hit. (Former Assistant County Manager) Robin Campbell comes in and says we need to cut the budget by 10% and we probably need to pause all capital projects because we just didn’t know what was going to happen,” Menser said. “Gary and I were like, ‘Pause the jail.’ We were already barely comfortable with it. It gave us kind of an excuse to do what we were nervous about to begin with. So that got paused, and then everything that happened with COVID with jail restrictions kicked the can down the road.”
Menser said the overcrowding problem in the jail was “frozen” until last summer when it returned to full booking, adding that the “same problem that was never solved is back.” The money that was once set to be used for the jail project were spent on other capital projects that grew more dire during and after the pandemic, such as the courthouse renovation.
“We’re kind of in a worse position in a way because we’re back with the same problem, but now the main financial tool that we were going to rely on to maybe solve the problem has been pivoted to a different solution,” Menser said. “... At the time, we had capital dollars available and no operational dollars. Now we don’t really have either.”
Menser said he is more open to the idea of expanding the jail as it is, as he described, “a problem that’s not going away and not getting solved.”
Commissioners Wayne Fournier and Rachel Grant also discussed the idea of finding a use for the work release facility and the juvenile facility.
County Manager Leonard Hernandez suggested taking a similar approach with the jail expansion discussions as the county took with its courthouse renovation, in that the county would engage with stakeholders to understand the needs from their perspective to create a pathway forward. Hernandez said the issue will continue to grow as the population of the county increases, making a quick projection that the county could see another 50,000 to 60,000 people over the next 10 years.
“The judges, as all of you know, there’s areas where they have some strong perspectives, and it would be good for us to create an opportunity for them to come to the table so we can have a dialogue in its right time,” he said.
