City of Kent staffers have decided to drop out of a group of South King County cities that want to build a new regional jail.
City officials decided the current Kent jail could serve the city’s needs for the next several years without spending as much as $13 million on a new jail.
Instead, staff plans to form a task force to develop sentencing alternatives as a way to help the 110-bed Kent Corrections Facility along Central Avenue South meet the expected population growth of inmates.
“We have a building with 10 to 20 more years of life,” City Chief Administrative Officer John Hodgson told the City Council at its Tuesday meeting. “We’re going to look to maximize that facility before we build a new facility ourselves or with others.”
The Kent City Council voted Feb. 19 to approve $40,000 to help the cities of Renton, Auburn, Tukwila, Federal Way and Des Moines fund a feasibility study about building and operating a regional jail in South King County. The size or location of a regional jail has yet to be determined.
“We are not moving forward (with the other cities),” Hodgson said to the Council. “But we left the door open to come in at a different time.”
Jail space became a hot topic in 2007 when King County officials announced that starting in 2012 the county would no longer accept misdemeanor offenders from cities at its Regional Justice Center facility in Kent or the King County Correctional Facility in downtown Seattle because projections showed the jails would run out of room. Instead, the county will focus on housing people arrested for or convicted of felonies.
Most cities in King County, excluding Kent, do not have jails, or have jails that are too small, so the cities contract with the county to house misdemeanor offenders, which includes those arrested for drunk driving, domestic violence, prostitution, minor assaults, petty theft and other non-felony violations.
Several King County cities also have contracted with Yakima County to house inmates, but Yakima County officials have told the cities they won’t be taking inmates from King County starting in 2010.
The Kent jail averages about 90 to 110 inmates per day, Kent Police Chief Steve Strachan said. That number is expected to increase in the next several years as Kent continues to grow, and could grow even more quickly if the unincorporated Panther Lake neighborhood of 24,000 residents ends up being annexed in the next two years to the city. Kent’s population now stands at 86,000.
Hodgson announced Tuesday that city staff soon will form a task force to review sentencing practices and look at alternative sentencing as a way to reduce the number of inmates and the amount of jail space needed. The task force will include representatives of the city prosecutor’s office, jail, municipal court, probation department and corrections officers union. Two city residents also will serve on the committee.
“By the end of the year, we hope to have new programs so we will not have to build a new jail,” Hodgson said. “We will look at current (sentencing) practices around the country that save money.”
Recent consultant studies for Kent estimated it would cost the city $9 million to add 50 beds to its jail, Hodgson said. To build a new 150-bed jail in the city would cost an estimated $13 million.
Those projected costs help caused city staff to look at sentencing alternatives rather than remodeling the jail, building a new jail or joining the South King County regional group to construct a new jail.
“We believe we can look at alternatives and take time before we invest in a jail,” Hodgson said.
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