Salt Lake County has yet to hire an architect to draw up plans for a new metro jail, but already Sheriff Aaron Kennard says the proposed jail will be too small.
According to Kennard, a 1989 study by Liebert & Associates, which predicted the county would need 1,200 beds by 1995, is no longer accurate."I'm fearful we're not planning long-range enough," Kennard told the Salt Lake County Council of Governments Thursday.
What the county needs is a new jail with 2,000 beds, with the capacity to double bunk in half the cells if necessary.
Last September the County Commission agreed to build a 1,200-bed jail on 30 acres at 825 E. 3300 South in Millcreek. The Salt Lake County Planning Commission signed off on the site in January. But Kennard now wants the County Commission to consider a larger jail.
Kennard said three things have happened in the five years since Liebert & Associates put together its study:
-The population along the Wasatch Front has boomed, fueled in large measure by a robust economy. More people means more crime, Kennard said.
-Cities and the county have also expanded their law enforcement forces, in part using federal grant money. More officers means more arrests.
-And finally, tolerance for crime has dropped. Tougher laws means more people sentenced to do time in jail - in many cases for longer periods of time.
The Liebert & Associates study predicted the county would need 1,200 beds by now; Kennard said the county often takes in 1,100 prisoners between the Oxbow and Metro jails right now, well over their combined capacity of about 900 prisoners. That has forced the county to prematurely release prisoners at the rate of 200 a month, primarily from the Metro jail.
Rather than build a jail that will need expanding almost the day it opens, Kennard thinks it makes sense - and could save taxpayers money - to think bigger right now in the "bonding, programming and planning" stage.
"Let's look at it on a bigger scale," Kennard said.
Kennard also is confident that whatever beds the county doesn't fill, he'll be able to rent to the state and U.S. Marshall service.
"The state is in dire need of beds," he said.
He is just as confident about how the public will react to the idea of a large jail.
"The public sentiment has been very supportive for additional cops on the street and additional jail space so when we make arrests these people pay their time," Kennard said.
The county plans to use general obligation bonds to build the new maximum-security jail, estimated previously to cost between $90 million and $100 million.
The county will ask voters to approve the bond project in a special election some time this year. Kennard expects to begin construction on the jail this fall; it will take two to three years to finish the facility.