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| County jail expansion going high-tech |
| By Kenneth C. Crowe II |
| Published: 04/09/2009 |
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TROY — When Sgt. Scott Dunham walks the expanded Rensselaer County Jail next year he'll have a heavy ring of keys jingling on his hip and a PDA in his hand. The old ways of corrections will meet high-tech reality in the $37 million expansion that will add 192 cells, giving the county room for 435 inmates in the South Troy correctional facility. Inmates will wear bracelets with bar codes and be watched by nearly 450 surveillance cameras. A correction officer or Sheriff Jack Mahar will be able to zoom in with a PDA to locate an inmate and see what he's doing at any moment. "It will be really different. We put a lot of thought into this," said Mahar, known in the county for appreciating the savings technology can bring. The jail will be the first in the region with personal digital assistants, Mahar said Wednesday during a tour of the new construction. Besides carrying the PDAs, officers also will gain access to locked areas using swipe cards and biometrics that will read either their fingerprints or conduct a retinal scan. They'll still need big jail keys to open some locked doors. Inmates processed through the new booking area also will sit in a high-tech scanning chair that will detect if they have any hidden metal objects. Inmates are expected to be quieter, too. Plans call for giving each prisoner wireless headsets to listen to televisions playing in the cell blocks. But even high tech can't change the fact that the county jail will need stout walls to keep inmates inside. "It's like a castle the way they're built out there," Dunham said. Unlike the current jail, Dunham said steps have been made to ensure the block walls have rebar placed inside. In 1993, the lack of metal bars was blamed with making it easier for two inmates to escape. Dunham was assigned by Mahar to monitor the construction. The sergeant said any rebar needed to meet correction standards has been put into the walls. "You're not breaking through anything here," Dunham said. "It's solid." The new jail wing, with its four pods of 48 cells each, is expected to open in December or January. Most of the construction work will be completed in the late fall. Read more. If link has expired, check the website of the article's original news source. |
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