Kootenai County jail expansion underway

By CHANSE WATSON

Managing Editor

WALLACE — The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office is currently in the midst of a 30,000-square-foot jail expansion that is set to be completed around Labor Day 2018. The $12.5 million project looks to bring some relief to the building’s overpopulation issue and raise its number of beds to 441.

To stress the severity of their situation, KCSO announced on Feb. 18 that they had hit a record-high of 471 inmates booked into their facility (94 of which were held off-site). The Kootenai County Jail is only designed to hold 327, so prisoners must be constantly transported to one of five neighboring facilities. One of these facilities being the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office/Jail in Wallace.

Originally built the 1970s as a used car lot, the repurposed SCSO building is much smaller in comparison to Kootenai’s jail and suffers from an aging infrastructure. The jail can currently house 48 inmates. That may sound adequate for Shoshone County, but when you factor in holding inmates from Kootenai and the Idaho Department of Corrections — putting heads in beds can get tricky and sometimes expensive.

“Kootenai messages me back and forth at least twice a week asking me to take prisoners,” SCSO Jail Captain Lance Stutzke said. “Any amount we can take, they will send us.”

On the surface, the sheriff’s office doesn’t mind taking the overflow. SCSO Sheriff Mike Gunderson explains that holding inmates for other agencies is a way to bring money into the county.

For example, KCSO pays Shoshone County $50 a day for holding just one of their prisoners. IDOC inmates bring in $45 a day as well. New legislation on the state level may increase this even more to $75 a day after 10 days.

“We can generate some decent revenue,” Gunderson said.

The Shoshone County Jail holds roughly 4-5 prisoners from KCSO a week and around that same amount for IDOC as well.

The risk with accepting outside inmates, though, is that it may push the jail to capacity and force SCSO to ship new local prisoners off-site. Gunderson says even though the office is saving money on prisoner transportation since they switched to contracting out that responsibility, it is still a cost they want to avoid.

KCSO is hoping that their new expansion will reduce or eliminate the need to house and transport inmates outside the area, but if inmate and population numbers continue to climb, the new expansion space could already be completely filled as soon as it is finished.

If this rise in incarcerated individuals continues, Gunderson wants to be ready to not only keep up with local arrests, but overflow from other facilities as well.

To do this, SCSO is currently exploring the idea of creating a new building or embarking upon a massive remodel. The talks are in their early stages, but Gunderson and Stutzke stress that something needs to be done soon in order to keep in compliance with state regulations and simply have room for “everyone.”

“Our facility is getting outdated,” Gunderson explained. “Between the standards for keeping jail certification and keeping up with a changing society, it’s difficult.”

The aging infrastructure that is the Shoshone County Jail suffers from a lack of suitable cells for certain individuals such as transgender inmates, mentally ill inmates, and/or sex offenders (collectively also referred to as protective custody or PC holds). Stutzke explains that the jail has roughly 10 PC inmates at any given time, but the building currently only has the facilities for four.

An increase in female arrests recently has also put a strain on the building’s capacity.

“A major issue is also the increase in the female inmate population,” Stutzke said. “This jail is designed for six female prisoners, (but) we’re constantly running 10 to 15…so we have to (keep them) in a larger male cell.”

On top of those issues, the archaic plumbing system in the building continues to cause problems.

Not being able to meet state standards could prove costly for SCSO if they were to lose their jail certification, which allows them to house state and federal inmates. Non-local inmates provide a decent source of income for the county. Gunderson and his administration were successful in getting the jail recertified last year, after staffing issues prevented it in the past.

With the problems laid out, Gunderson plans explore their options.

“If we are going to continue to house inmates, we have to address these issues,” he explained. “We need to do an analysis — is it cost-effective to put the money into the existing building just to rehab it and get it up to code, (or) would it be cost-effective to abandon this building and find another building site here in Wallace?”

County law states that the jail must be in the county seat — which is Wallace. Since Wallace lacks an abundance of undeveloped areas, SCSO may have to convince the city to annex land if they want to pursue the new building route.

Gunderson believes that if they received a new building, the sheriff’s office would have the ability to house more non-local inmates and in-turn, bring more money into the county. He says that this would cut down on transportation costs as well.

As for renovating or expanding the current structure, both Gunderson and Stutzke think that there is only so much that can be done.

“There’s really not a lot of room to expand here,” Stutzke said.

The sheriff’s office property is nestled between Bank Street to the south, Seventh Street buildings to the west, and the Coeur d’Alene River to the north and east.

Kootenai County is currently spending $150,000 to $160,000 per month to house inmates off-site, and that figure does not include transportation costs.

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Brian Walker with the Hagadone News Network contributed to this article.