With as much as $400,000 to spend, Salt Lake County Sheriff Aaron Kennard has gone shopping for new jail space.
The county has authorized Kennard to look for an empty building that could be converted to a temporary jail until the new jail is completed in two years.Kennard is also moving forward on plans to convert the ninth floor of the Metropolitan Hall of Justice into jail space for 40 men. The 10th floor last year was converted into jail space for 40 women.
"Anything that can be converted into jail space we ought to look at," said Salt Lake County Commission Chairman Brent Overson.
The county's new 1,776-bed facility is supposed to be finished in July 1998. But overcrowding at the existing jail is forcing law enforcement officials to release criminals hours after they are arrested. The prompt release means illegal aliens, drug dealers and prostitutes continue to plague the parks and city streets.
While the county didn't formally set a ceiling on the possible costs of fixing up an empty building, Overson told the Deseret News, "If it costs $300,000 or $400,000, that would be worth it to get these people off the street and in jail."
Kennard has already considered and rejected the empty Fred Meyer building on 9th South and State Street, the sheriff said. Overson had recommended that Kennard look there first.
"We're looking at $500,000 to retrofit it, and then I'm not sure it would fit our needs," Kennard said.
The county doesn't have the manpower to staff a jail so far away from the current jail, he said.
Converting the ninth floor into a jail will cost $200,000, Kennard said. The county will give him the needed money in June.
Kennard plans to use the ninth floor to hold illegal aliens awaiting deportation, freeing up more beds in the main jail for violent criminals.
Kennard wants to have the ninth floor finished by late spring, "before the real influx of summer bookings hits us."
Overson wants to use an empty building, in addition to the ninth floor, because citizen outrage over the crime problem is mounting.
He recently told the Rio Grande Community Council that the county is pushing both options.
"I don't think we have enough space to get us through 1998, even with the ninth floor," Overson told the Deseret News.
The right empty building could give the county jail space for hundreds of inmates. The Fred Meyer building could have held between two hundred and three hundred people if it had been feasible, Kennard said.
The county finished the 10th floor in three months; Kennard wants to finish the ninth in two.
He has already moved the SWAT team, internal affairs and detectives from the ninth floor to other buildings in the county.