Work Center Creates Space at County Jail

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — A new $7.9 million temporary facility, intended to alleviate overcrowding at the Whatcom County jail, has opened after a year of construction and will serve as a work center for minimum-security inmates.

The Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office Jail Work Center is a 150-bed facility that will help to free up space at the existing county jail, allowing law enforcement to arrest people with multiple outstanding misdemeanor warrants.

The work center, built by Bellingham-based Impero Contracting, has 13 cells in different sizes located off a main corridor. Eight housing units are for eight-person work crews. They are segregated so that crew leaders do not disrupt other inmates when taking their crews to jobs, such as park maintenance and highway cleanup.

The center will also have 84 beds for inmates from the main jail, including a 20-person women’s dorm and two 32-person men’s dorms. All housing units have a toilet, shower and sink. In addition, each cell has a television that will be closely monitored and used for educational purposes, including videos on substance abuse and sexually transmitted diseases.

The jail includes a caged recreational area, a motion-sensor fence topped with barbed wire, and cameras with tilt and pan abilities.

Each housing unit also has a video visitation unit that eliminates the need to transport inmates for visits. Visitors will sit in an alcove in the lobby to talk to inmates.

Officials are hopeful that the center will lower the number of repeat offenses by inmates and will discourage them from committing more serious crimes.

The center will serve the county until the new jail is built, which will most likely be a 1,000-bed facility designed for all security levels. A site for the new jail will be selected and purchased in the spring, with construction completed by 2014, according to officials.

A voter-approved tax increase imposed in 2004 helped pay for the interim facility and will help finance the future jail as well. When the new jail is ready, the temporary jail will be sold to help pay off the new main jail. The county can sell it for industrial use because of the heavy-duty load-bearing walls and the electrical system.