WASHINGTON COUNTY, ARKANSAS, Ark. — The Washington County Detention Center has announced it is moving forward with its COVID Mitigation Project (CMP), by hiring an architect and construction manager.
County officials said COVID-19 has "substantially impacted the operations of the Washington County Detention Center in a variety of ways," and that the separation of diagnosed and undiagnosed detainees is inherently difficult in a crowded jail.
Washington County Sheriff Jay Cantrell said, “With our county jail routinely at or over maximum capacity, and COVID still a common occurrence in our congregate setting, the duty to separate and isolate COVID-positive detainees has never been more challenging. The COVID Mitigation Project is a critical need for the health and safety of detainees and our detention staff."
Washington County Judge Patrick Deakins said, “Although COVID-19 is in the rearview for most of Arkansas and Washington County, it is still an operational reality for our Washington County Detention Center.”
Currently, Deakins said, the layout of the jail is an issue.
"We have a facility down at the detention center that was never designed with a pandemic in mind. There are large congregate rooms that don't work well for quarantining."
Cantrell added that the housing units are meant for 24 or 32 beds each, making it difficult to isolate sick inmates.
Another goal of the project is to improve traffic flow inside the jail.
"One of the major bottlenecks in our jail right now, which results in people being around each other longer and exposures, is our booking and intake area," Deakins said. "We have to get more efficient there so that we can separate those individuals out when they arrive at the facility ... without having that congregate sitting around, waiting in a waiting room type environment."
COVID-positive female detainees have been especially impacted, due to the limited space available for them in the jail, officials said.
The CMP aims to improve:
- Quarantine Capabilities
- Dedicated intake quarantining for male and female arrestees
- Increase in the ratio of pods with separate RTUs (air supply units)
- Social Distancing
- Increase court space
- Increase intake space (creating "one-way" detainee flow)
- Increase medical center space (adding beds, increasing negative pressure cells)
- Increase classroom space
- Storage for additional food, goods, and general supplies
- Relocating, replacing, or enlarging refrigerator and freezer units
- Increase dry goods space
- Adding bulk storage "warehousing"
- Providing access for semi-trailer truck delivery
To those who oppose the idea of a jail expansion, Deakins said he wants taxpayers to know this project is specifically addressing a health and safety issue.
"We are going to continue to monitor our capacity situations that everybody's probably aware of in this county, the challenges that we're going to have there, more solutions are going to have to come in that avenue. This is [a] different and separate project strictly just to give us the ability to survive and thrive from a detention center standpoint, with the COVID pandemic kind of looming over us," Deakins said.
Cantrell said it will be an improvement that goes beyond COVID.
"It's not just going to help us with COVID. It's going to help us with flu and with hepatitis C and with tuberculosis and any other contagious virus that might come into the jail," Cantrell said.
These measures are being taken a few months after a nearly two-year-long lawsuit was settled wherein five former Washington County jail inmates claimed they were given ivermectin to treat COVID-19 without their consent.
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