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Houghton County voters will decide in less than two weeks if the 55 year old county jail will get an overhaul. Residents expressed their concerns and asked questions during an open discussion held last night at the county courthouse, as they educate themselves before taking to the voting booths.
“A jail is part of a healthy and safe community. It’s something that’s required. We always say ‘this is not our jail, it’s your jail. It belongs to the tax payers.’ We have a problem here and we’re asking for some help to fix it,” said Houghton County Sheriff Brian McLean, who explained to voting taxpayers the benefit of expanding the current facility that has a maximum capacity of 28 inmates.
“Our record so far has been 43. That’s 43 bodies in that 28 bed jail down here. So we just roll out another mattress and put them on the floor,” McLean said.
During last night’s presentation, voters were able to view the proposed floor plan that would raise that capacity to 55 inmates that county administrator Eric Forsberg says is needed, not for the comfort of its inmates, but for the safety of the county’s residents. “In the past people have said ‘we don’t care about the prisoners. We don’t care what the conditions are.’ I would differ on that but I would also say that this is not about the 30 or 40 people that we have in jail right now, it’s about the 30 or 40 more that probably need to be in there and we don’t have the room for them,” Forsberg said.
Currently the jail itself is overpopulated, with additional beds available at the county work camp, but the Sheriff says that most inmates don’t meet the required criteria to qualify for housing at the offsite facility. “We’re down to around seven inmates up there. As a matter of fact, we normally ship out two work crews during the day. But today we had to only send out one van because there weren’t enough inmates,” said McLean.
If the proposal is approved, that work camp would be moved to the main jail facility. McLean said, “Currently running the two facilities, our staff is split. So having everything under one roof is a much better utilization of staff—more staff efficient.”
“Something needs to be done. The commissioners of Houghton County have done their homework. In their opinion this is the most cost effective solution for the residents of Houghton County,” said project manager Karin Cooper, who designed the proposed addition.
Along with more inmate space, the new design also implements updated security features such as an intake bay known as a sally port. McLean said, “A sally port is designed, whether it’s a vehicle sally port or a pedestrian sally port, is that the doors are interlocking. When you unlock one door, you can’t open the other one and so fourth so a person comes into the sally port through the open door and that door is locked behind them before they can even get into whatever secure area they’re looking for so there’s no chance of turning around and running out the back door.”
The county has created a video tour of the current facility to give voters a better understanding of the current jail. “If they’d like to go to houghtoncounty.net we have a special section on the proposed jail millage along with a three minute video to take a look at the current jail and give them a good idea of what conditions are like in their right now.”
Another public meeting is scheduled for this evening at 7:00pm at the Franklin Township Hall.
