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| Jail Opens Doors for Citizen Tour |
| By North County News |
| Published: 10/17/2005 |
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Jim O'Neill is looking forward to opening the third jail of his 30-year corrections career in Maryland. "I cannot wait until we are all under one roof," said O'Neill, director of the Baltimore County Department of Corrections. This weekend, the public is invited to tour the new 330,000-square-foot addition to the Baltimore County Detention Center during an open house from 9 a.m. to noon Oct. 15. The building now dominates the corner of Kenilworth and Bosley avenues. On a recent afternoon, a buzz of construction workers carted, hauled, lifted, painted, scraped, installed, wired and swept the new $77 million cream-and-beige concrete facility in preparation for its unveiling to the public. At present, space is so tight at the current jail that on a night last week 54 inmates had to sleep on the floor. It won't be until after Nov. 1 that inmates from the current jail will start to be transferred to the new one in phases, O'Neill said. Last week, a state-of-the-art security system was still being installed on the fourth floor of the new facility. "Until that is ready to go, we are not ready to go," he said. The new facility's $77 million cost was covered by $44 million in county funding and $33 million in state funding. The current jail at 400 Kenilworth Ave. has a capacity of 729. On one day last week, it housed 944 inmates. The new jail adds 784 beds, including 224 beds for female inmates, creating a revised capacity of 1,513. At the new facility, 560 beds will be for men, arranged in 10 56-bed dorms of minimum and maximum security. Each "housing unit" of 56 inmates will be supervised by one corrections officer, who will staff his or her shift for three months before going into a rotation. Corrections industry standards allow for as many as 64 inmates to be supervised by one officer, he said. Unlike the current jail, the new one will operate based on what is known in the corrections industry as "direct supervision." In the current facility, under indirect supervision, an officer sits in a glass enclosed booth and observes the inmates. In the new expansion, the officer sits on an open, raised podium directly in the unit itself and is responsible for everything that goes on among those 56 inmates, O'Neill said. For example, a corrections officer has the right to deny an inmates's requests for exercise or may order him to clean all the windows and toilets in the unit for a week if he misbehaves. A small multipurpose room in each unit allows bringing a chaplain, counselor or others into the unit rather than moving the inmate through the entire jail to get to a meeting room, O'Neill said. |
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