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| Federal inmates filling beds at new jail |
| By nogalesinternational.com - Jonathan Clark |
| Published: 05/27/2011 |
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he new county detention center is slowly filling up, thanks to a steady flow of new federal inmates from the U.S. Marshal’s Office. A month after the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office transferred 70 prisoners to the new $46-million facility on Congress Drive, the jail population was up to 141, according to a May 25 sheriff’s report. Of those inmates, 65 came from the U.S. Marshal and one more was a U.S. Customs and Border Protection detainee. “We’ve been fazing them in little by little,” Sheriff Antonio Estrada said of the federal inmates. Lt. Roberto Morales, detention center commander, said that in an effort to ease the transition, jail staff had purposely stopped taking federal prisoners at the old facility on Hohokam Drive immediately prior to the April 19-20 overnight move. Only eight of the first class of inmates were U.S. Marshal’s detainees, he said, meaning that 58 of the federal prisoners on May 25 have moved into the new jail since then. Federal authorities pay a $65-per-night fee for each inmate, and Estrada said his office aims to keep adding these paying guests to the 372-bed, 100,000-square-foot facility. “We really want to get up to around 200 or so,” Estrada said. “I don’t know how long that’s going to take … but that’s our goal, to keep getting more of those inmates to help pay off the debt we have on the jail.” County Finance Director Jennifer St. John said it's difficult to determine whether the county makes a profit from jailing federal inmates, since different inmates require different levels of service. But profit-making isn't necessarily the idea behind the project, she said. Read More. |
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