Five years after it opened, the Douglas County Jail will be expanded slightly to handle a growing inmate population.

Douglas County commissioners this week unanimously approved hiring Lawrence-based BA Green Construction Co. Inc. to build an addition to the jail. The addition will allow the jail’s 196 beds to be reconfigured to house more inmates.

“This will allow for more movement in terms of where inmates go,” Douglas County Undersheriff Kenny Massey said. “It gives us a lot more flexibility.”

Douglas County Jail’s inmate population spiked in 2004 with an average daily population of 159 inmates — up from 125 in 2003.

That’s short of the capacity, but sheriff’s office Lt. Kari Wempe said 56 beds were designated for work-release inmates who sleep at the jail but go to jobs during the day. Inmates from the regular jail population can’t be housed with the work-release prisoners, she said.

“We can say that we’re full, but what that generally means is that we have to have a certain percentage of beds open because people are arrested every day,” Wempe said.

As a result, the county spent about $124,000 over a 10-month period to house inmates at other county jails because the jail was overpopulated.

“We simply didn’t have the space,” Wempe said.

Promises

The Douglas County Jail, 3601 E. 25th St., was about 90 percent complete in this 1999 file photo. It opened Sept. 11 of that year. County officials have hired a company to expand the facility to house more inmates.

The jail opened Sept. 11, 1999. Construction was financed through a $24.6 million bond.

The first payment on the bond was in 2000 and the final payment is slated for 2016. Money from a sales tax is being used to make the bond payments.

At the time of construction, officials said they’d built the jail big enough to handle Douglas County’s needs for 20 years.

“This was going to be a smaller building than what was built,” then-County Commissioner Louis McElhaney told the Journal-World in 1998. “But the consultants said that by year 2005, (that size) jail may already be crowded. I didn’t want to just get the building built and then have to go back to the public saying we need more space. We decided to go ahead and build 196 to hold us for quite some time.”

Current Commissioner Bob Johnson suggested this week, however, that the changes were minor.

“We’re overcapacity in parts of the jail and not fully utilizing the work-release area,” he said. “So we’re converting part of the jail.”

Industry standards

To meet correction industry standards, the new addition will house a new outdoor recreation area for round-the-clock inmates in an area formerly designated for work-release prisoners.

Jail officials plan to use 20 to 25 beds in the work-release wing for regular inmates.

Wempe said new state sentencing guidelines might be responsible for the burgeoning jail population.

Wempe noted that inmates previously entered the Kansas Department of Corrections prison system for committing felony thefts of $500 or more.

Felony thefts since last year have a threshold of $1,000.

Laurel Hunsinger, Lawrence, and his grandchildren, from left, Hillary Hunsinger, Hannah Hunsinger and Stuart Hunsinger, of Olathe, explore a cell during the 1999 open house of the Douglas County Jail. The facility at 3601 E. 25th St. was designed to house nearly 200 inmates, but officials say it now needs an addition. It opened in September 1999.

“Anything $999 and below goes to the county jail,” she said.

Nonetheless, the state’s prison population also has consistently increased from an average daily population of 8,604 in 2000 to 9,126 last year.

Construction on the jail expansion should begin in the next 30 days.

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