By Kristopher Anderson
Lodi News-Sentinel
LODI, Calif. — Would housing inmates in temporary modular buildings help alleviate overcrowding in San Joaquin County Jail?
That question has emerged as a key issue in the race for county sheriff, but the answers are not clear-cut.
Sheriff Steve Moore has repeatedly argued that retrofitting modular facilities to meet state standards would prove too costly, and said the county would still be making payments long after the short lifespan of the buildings runs out.
Other critics agree, calling it a temporary solution to a permanent problem.
The Board of State and Community Corrections sides with Moore, telling the Lodi News-Sentinel it would not finance a county with a plan to house inmates in portable modular facilities because of concerns over quality and longevity.
But challenger Pat Withrow, currently a sergeant with the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department, has made the idea the focal point of his campaign to unseat Moore in the June election. He argues the county can afford to build and staff four modular facilities, which would hold more than 200 inmates, without state funding. He says if he is elected Sheriff, the units would be up and running within months and reduce the number of inmates released early from custody.
One California company that designs and builds modulars for prisons and jails says the idea is proven to work, and at a fraction of the cost of a traditional jail facility.
And as for the lifespan of a facility? Mendocino County has housed inmates in a temporary modular facility for nearly 30 years.
“We’re going to be the example to rest of the state on how to be fiscally responsible when it comes to housing inmates,” Withrow said. “The benefit to our community is going to be tenfold.”
Possible solutions to the housing situation
Withrow has pitched the idea for months, but hasn’t provided many details until an interview this week, where he elaborated on his plan.
He proposed building four modular facilities, each complete with dayrooms and bathrooms and able to house 64 minimum-security inmates. Each facility would cost between $800,000 and $1 million, and meet the state’s minimum standards for housing inmates, he said.
Modular units can be made in a number of different ways and using multiple materials. Withrow has proposed using portable units — not unlike those found in schools across the country — but built to withstand the wear and tear associated with a jail.
Withrow said the majority of staffing costs will already be covered. There are currently 12 funded but vacant correctional officer positions, he said, enough to staff three of the modular facilities. The fourth would be staffed with four correctional officers for a cost of $500,000 per year.
The project would be paid for with $16 to $17 million available in the county’s general fund, he said.
“I guarantee these steel-welded buildings — with stucco on outside and fiberglass on the inside — are built to last,” Withrow said.
On Wednesday, Moore said those 12 vacant positions are already assigned to other parts of the jail, and while the Sheriff’s Department actively attempts to fill those slots, correctional officers are working overtime to make up for their absence. Withrow on Thursday disagreed, saying the 12 new officers “could definitely be used” in the modular facilities.
But according to Moore, to staff the four units, Withrow must hire 16 correctional officers as a cost of roughly $2 million per year. And while $16 or $17 million is available, Moore says it is one-time money — once it’s gone, it’s gone, and the county has yet to identify a sustainable source of revenue in the future.
Moore also questions whether the county’s general revenue fund would be able to cover maintenance costs for the units and the food, clothing, medical and other costs associated with 256 additional inmates.
Withrow said those are “minimal costs,” adding, “I believe the citizens and the Board of Supervisors would be more than willing to fund that cost to protect our citizens.”
During a debate held last month, Moore said when the county looked at portable modular facilities several years ago, state officials advised against them, because they believed the buildings wouldn’t last long enough to get a return on the county’s investment.
“It gets extremely expensive in order to retrofit these units in order” to meet the state’s minimum standards for housing inmates, Moore added.
“If that was a viable alternative, I would have executed it a long time ago,” he said. “It’s just not viable when the dollars you’re going to put forward now can’t get the return on them.”
Instead, Moore is in the process of receiving approval from the state to double-bunk select units, which would open roughly 200 beds for a one-time cost of $700,000. The plan would also reduce the number of inmates released early, he said.
In addition, the county has gained $380,000 from the Community Corrections Partnership to upgrade security at the county’s Honor Farm, nearly enough to open up an additional 144 beds there.
The Board of State and Community Corrections, tasked with choosing which counties receive state funding, says counties are free to experiment with housing inmates in modular facilities — just not with money from the state, said Tracie Cone, spokeswoman for the BSCC.
According to Cone, the board holds many of the same reservations as Moore, namely about the lifespan of modular buildings and the ability for them to meet California inmate housing standards for a reasonable price.
“We encourage counties to find ways to handle local offender populations that best meet local needs,” Cone said. “However, the modular units would have to meet the state’s very strict regulations for jail construction and the cost of retrofitting them might prove cost-prohibitive, especially for housing that would have a relatively short lifespan.”
Looking at precedents
Some questions about the modulars’ lifespan might be answered by Mendocino County, where inmates have been housed in a modular unit since 1985, according to Lt. John Bednar of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department.
The county jail’s 154-bed facility was built to temporarily house inmates for 10 or 15 years until the county could afford to build a new, permanent facility. Those funds have not yet become available, but “if we had the money, (the modular) would be the first building to go,” Bednar said.
The welded-together metal building has been deteriorating and struggling with rust and plumbing issues for the last 20 years, Bednar said.
But despite the issues that have arisen, it’s still up and running.
Bednar noted that modular units today are made of superior materials, and comparing today’s models to the one built in Mendocino County 30 years ago would be like comparing “apples and oranges.”
“The newer modular facilities they can build are superior to what we have,” he said. “Would I go out and buy the same building again? No. Is modular still an option in the future? Absolutely.”
Ken Holloway, CEO of Relocatable Confinement Facilities in Dixon, helped design the Mendocino County facility. He said his company built “quite a few” modular units meant for housing inmates in the 1980s, but the market dried up in 1990.
Holloway said in recent years, his company has pitched the idea in all 58 California counties, but no sheriffs are willing to get on board with modulars because they know the state doesn’t support the idea.
“The state is not excited about building temporary units,” he said. “(The state and sheriffs) want to build Taj Mahals, but that’s not going to help the problem today.”
Holloway said a 64-inmate facility, like the one Withrow is proposing, would cost between $800,000 to $1 million and could be built within 60 to 90 days of receiving a design plan.
“The stigma is, ‘We don’t want to build something temporary. It won’t last. Let’s make them better citizens,’” Holloway said. “It won’t happen that way. They have to discipline these people and incarceration is the only thing we know how to do.”
In February, San Joaquin County learned it wouldn’t receive $33.3 million in state funding to build a new 384-bed facility to replace the Honor Farm. While the plan wouldn’t have created any additional beds, it would have created the flexibility to incarcerate more inmates, according to county officials.
The county will now wait until June to learn if it will finally land a piece of state funding.
Moore says help from state officials is necessary to build any large-scale facility that would alleviate jail overcrowding in the county.
But Withrow argues, now that some details of his plan are out, that the county can do this on its own.
“I’m going to show (the state) we can do this and be fiscally responsible for our community,” he said. “They probably weren’t even aware how these buildings are made and how durable they are.”