LBJ’ Crowns Sheriff Joe’s Construction Program

Maricopa County boasts not one new facility, but four.

LOWER BUCKEYE JAIL (LBJ)
Attendees at the ACA’s winter show in Phoenix have a chance to visit several new facilities, including the recently-opened Lower Buckeye Jail, or “LBJ.” Highlights include the largest video visitation installation in the world, a well-equipped 60-bed medical infirmary, extensive psychiatric units, massive property-storage capability, and eye-scan access for both staff and inmates.

DLR Group designed the spacious 670,000-square-foot facility to hold 1,808 inmates in a three-story maximum-security tower and two-story mainframe facility. “What was particularly unique about this facility was the number of different programs and functions being performed all in the same building,” says Tamara Clarke, project architect for DLR Group.

LBJ's infirmary, pharmacy and medical clinics will support the entire Maricopa County detention system, roughly 6,000 inmates. The main clinic has regular treatment rooms and exam rooms along with x-ray and dental areas. Efficiency and security are maximized not just by what's inside the medical facility, but also by the infirmary's placement in relation to other jail functions.

“We went ahead and put the clinic right next to the intake area,” says Capt. Charles Johnson, who leads Sheriff Joe Arpaio's New Jail Construction Team. “Even though we have holding cells in the clinic area, it will be easier for us to move those inmates if we have overflow, and we don't have to bring them as deep into the facility.” Escorting inmates to the infirmary through the sallyport is facilitated by a separate entrance that bypasses intake.

Specialized clinics were included to further reduce the jail system's costly dependence on the county hospital. Casts can be made in orthopedics, and the ophthalmology room is fully equipped for eye exams. Formerly, this required a deputy to escort a single inmate to the hospital, taking as long as six hours. The ophthalmologist can now see as many as nine patients in the same amount of time.

In many cases, inmates don't even have to visit a clinic for exams and treatment. Each housing unit at LBJ has a medical exam room, nurse's station and inmate medical toilet.

The 256-bed psychiatric unit is the largest in the state of Arizona, according to Johnson. Each of the six psychiatric units is designed for inmates' special needs, ranging from the psychotic to the suicidal. Two of the pysch units were designed to house females. Group counseling rooms range in size and accommodate as many as 50 inmates in one counseling session.

The visitation system for LBJ and other facilities is comprised of 126 visitor video-visitation terminals and 323 terminals for inmates. According to the manufacturer, Multimedia Telesys Inc. (MTI), this is the world's largest VVS. The system will eventually add 250 primary courts, 750 public defenders, and 1,000 parole officers.

Another program at LBJ is Sheriff Joe's “High School of Hard Knocks,” a certified high school program. “We run the only certified high school in a state of Arizona detention facility,” Johnson says. “This is not a GED program; this is the sheriff's charter school, with a regular curriculum.”

Officials expect more than 150 juveniles to be enrolled at one time. The facility can support the program because each pod has a classroom and computer lab, and the recreation yards allow the Sheriff's Office to meet physical fitness requirements.

4th AVE. JAIL
The new 620,000-square-foot 4th Ave. Jail has many of the same features as LBJ, including a casino-worthy switching system for video visits, eye-scan access and food-service retherm innovations, but stands out with a paperless booking system and its fourth-story segregation cells. And while LBJ's large site gave designers a spacious footprint to work within, the tight urban site used for the 4th Ave. Jail makes this facility a lesson in making the most of limited space.

Designed by Durrant/HOK, the $137 million maximum-security facility is run entirely by touch screen. Dedicated to staff-efficiency, the jail also includes three courtrooms, NAFIS palmprint scanners, a steel-lined central control room and more than 700 cameras.

The new 87,000-square-foot intake and release center is built to handle 1,200 bookings a day with a variety of holding cells for 157 detainees. Under Arizona law, arrestees must appear before a magistrate within 24 hours of arrest. To meet this time frame and minimize transportation costs, intake has two courtrooms for initial appearances, open at all times.

Each pair of segregation cells shares a recreation yard, and each is fronted by a vestibule with interlocking doors serving as the security foyer, giving officers added distance in delivering food, accommodates contact visits with attorneys, and includes a small table for inmate dining.

Multimedia Telesys added a unique video visitation application to the close-custody cells by creating units on wheels. The hands-free units feature a microphone, speakers and 20-inch monitor attached by a 50-foot umbilical cord, wheeled in by officers and locked into the vestibule at visitation (see Product of the Month). The 4th Ave. Jail was featured as the July/August 2004 Correctional News Facility of the Month.

TENT CITY
In 1993, Sheriff Joe started the nation's largest Tent City for convicted inmates. Over 2,000 sentenced men and women are housed in the canvas incarceration compound.

To support the tents, the new Estrella Support Building (ESB) was built on the east end of the In-Tents facility yard, south of the current Estrella Jail. This building contains dayrooms, medical clinic and chapel for the “In-Tents” inmates and offices for the officers. The ESB also is also part of Maricopa County's advanced video visitation system.

FOOD FACTORY
It is the largest non-commercial cook-chill center in the world. Located near LBJ, the $40 million Central Services Building is broken up into seven kitchen areas, including processing areas for meat and other foods, bakery, dehydration room, cannery and curing coolers. Also known as “The Food Factory,” the facility processes 40,000 meal trays per day.

Within The Food Factory is a meal-tray processing assembly for cycling trays and food carts, where food is dispensed into trays that were custom designed to have hot and cold sides, matching corresponding hot and cold sides on the carts. Retherm units will keep the trays cold until it's time to heat up the warm side.

The bakery includes two flour silos that can hold 30,000 pounds of flour. The 12,500-square-foot freezer is almost the length of a football field, and allows Sheriff Joe's Food & Beverage Department to take advantage of donations of excess supply from food companies — getting bargains at a moment's notice — and to store seasonal items.

Designed by DLR Group, the facility also includes an intake center, with showers, where inmates are inspected for not only contraband, but also signs of illness. To help the county maintain sanitary semi trucks, a free-standing truck wash was built just outside The Food Factory to keep the inside of the trailers clean.