Laundry Consolidation Creates Moneymaker

ANTIOCH, Tenn. – Following completion of a new centralized laundry facility, for the first time in recent history female inmates in Davidson County have the opportunity to work during their incarceration.

The county’s jail system, which houses about 2,600 inmates a year, previously had laundry operations at each of the three correctional facilities spread around the county. But when plans for a new women's facility began in 2002, officials decided to consolidate laundry operations at one location.

“Each facility had its own laundry and it was not only cost-prohibitive to keep doing that, it was also a difficult thing to manage,” says Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall. “We centralized it and believe we're saving some money and are able to put more people to work and have a significant potential for growth.”

The laundry equipment at the facility, located about 10 miles from downtown Nashville in Antioch, was manufactured and installed by Alliance Laundry Systems. The facility includes three 250-pound washers, two 225-pound washers, two 60-pound washers, eight 170-pound dryers, two 70-pound dryers and 45 sets of top-load washers and dryers.

The combination creates the potential to wash and dry 1.2 million pounds of laundry a month. However, right now the county only washes 23,000 pounds of laundry a month.

“We're not even scratching the surface of what we can do,” Hall says. Officials are going to spend the next year researching ways to increase the facility's laundry load through contracts with private and public agencies.

“The sky is the limit,” Hall says. “We can generate revenue from the private sector and probably offset the cost for some of the other government functions in our community. We're trying to find ways to reduce our costs, but also provide a service.”

The facility provides positions for 12 female inmates, who are supervised by three staff members. They work in shifts from 4 a.m. to the afternoon. Before the facility was built, there were no work assignments that could be given to women.

“The morale of the work force – the inmates – and the staff that supervise the women that are working at the laundry has improved dramatically,” Hall says. “We believe it gives them something positive to do, but it also provides a service.” Because the facility is at the same location as the minimum-security inmate workforce, transportation costs are avoided.

“We can easily walk them back and forth and have them working at that site,” Hall says “Our downtown jails are primarily high-risk offenders that are awaiting court. Obviously they wouldn't be the inmates we'd want to work.” Those same high-risk inmates were a major concern during the transition from multiple laundry sites to one centralized facility. Planners knew that if any problems occurred those high-risk inmates could put safety and security at the county's jails in jeopardy.

“I think the coordination of making sure our facilities received what they needed throughout the transitioning was the most important part,” Hall says. “You don't want to have a riot on your hands while you're opening a new laundry.”

With the help of a transitioning team, which worked for months on the project, any major disasters were avoided and the centralized laundry facility opened without a hitch in October 2004. One of the former laundry spaces has been converted into a kitchen expansion and officials are in the process of planning conversions of the other now vacant laundry rooms.