ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 12, 1996 TAG: 9602120002
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
When a new annex of the Roanoke City Jail opens this month, it will alleviate an overcrowding problem as old as the jail itself.
With the conversion of an adjacent office building into space for an additional 304 beds, Roanoke Sheriff Alvin Hudson says the jail will soon be able to accommodate as many inmates as a small prison.
"I could hold 800 with no problem," he said.
Although Hudson hopes that won't happen any time soon, he said the $9.4 million expansion was desperately needed to ease conditions in a jail that often imprisons nearly three times the inmates it was designed to hold.
Friday, there were 574 inmates in the existing four-story jail, which has an operating capacity of 238. Cells designed for one person were holding three, with an extra bunk built in and a mattress on the floor.
"The tension is so high, we're having fight after fight after fight," Hudson said.
As early as this week, Hudson plans to relieve that tension by moving inmates into a two-story jail addition that was formerly the Datasafe Co.'s building at 330 W. Campbell Ave. While the project appears far from finished on the outside, the second-floor cells are complete and look as welcoming as a jail can be.
The newly painted spacious cellblocks include some amenities not found in the existing jail, such as an intercom system in each cell to allow inmates to communicate with guards, and skylights in the day areas to meet state requirements for natural lighting.
The annex also includes a dormitory for work-release prisoners, a small gymnasium with a basketball court and an exercise room, a library, and a rooftop recreation area.
"Some people might call it a hotel," Hudson said. "But when you get in here and all the doors slam locked behind you, and you've lost your freedom, it isn't any hotel or motel."
On the day it opened in 1979, the Roanoke City Jail was holding more inmates than the 162 for which it was designed. Overcrowding has been a problem ever since.
"We had people who kept coming in the front door," Hudson said. "And they weren't going out the back door."
Several expansions pushed the building's capacity to 238. But in the late 1980s - about the time crack cocaine was taking hold in Roanoke - the jail's population quickly outgrew the expansion efforts.
The jail also has had to contend with a rapid growth of female inmates, with more than 100 women occupying a space that originally was intended for fewer than 20, Hudson said.
On busy weekends, the jail has been holding more than 600 inmates, forcing the sheriff's office to triple-bunk cells and put down mattresses in the library, chapel and courthouse holding cells. In some cases, people who showed up on a Friday to pull a weekend stint were turned away and told to come back later when there was room for them.
For years, Roanoke judges have sentenced criminals knowing that jail space was limited. Although the overcrowding problem will be solved almost overnight, Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell does not expect judges to respond by suddenly getting tougher.
"I don't think the addition of 300 jail beds in the Roanoke Valley will change the dynamics of sentencing practices," Caldwell said.
For the most part, long jail terms have been a certainty only for the truly dangerous criminals and for the habitual offenders who first squander chances such as probation and community service. "Basically, a person has to work pretty hard to get a significant jail sentence," Caldwell said.
In other cases, where judges might consider alternative sentencing, the extra jail space might become a factor in a borderline situation, Caldwell said. But he wonders just how long that extra space will be there.
"I just do not believe that the beds will remain empty for very long," he said. "It's kind of like 'The Field of Dreams': If you build it, they will come."
If you smoke cigarettes or drive a car in Roanoke, then you've been helping to pay for a bigger jail.
City Council voted in 1993 to increase the city cigarette tax from 14 cents to 17 cents a pack and the automobile license decal fee from $15 to $20 a year to finance general obligation bonds for the project.
Early estimates put the expansion at $5 million. But some unexpected problems - including the discovery that the office building was lopsided - pushed the cost to $9.4 million, according to Jesse Hall, the city's deputy director of finance.
The state will pay $2.3 million, and the U.S. Marshals Service has chipped in another $750,000 because the jail houses federal prisoners awaiting trial.
Although the cost is almost twice the original estimate, Hall and Hudson said, the total would be even higher if the city had built a separate building. By connecting the Datasafe building to the existing jail, Hudson said he is saving money by centralizing services such as the kitchen and laundry for the entire jail population.
In recent weeks, a flurry of last-minute adjustments delayed the opening date of the annex. Last Friday, construction workers were blowing plastic foam between walls to fill empty spaces, after Hudson worried that the hollow areas would creating booming noises when inmates banged on the walls.
As he walked through the annex, the sheriff struck the walls with his fist, and seemed satisfied with the muffled thumps that resulted.
While there have been some minor construction glitches, the biggest battle of the annex was fought on paper, in a bureaucratic struggle with the state Department of Corrections over how much space should be allotted for each inmate.
Before approving the construction plans, the state required that each two-inmate cell contain 115 square feet. The city had proposed 85 square feet per cell, an improvement over the current setup, which puts three inmates in a 70-square-foot cell.
Hudson grudgingly complied with the Department of Corrections requirement in order to obtain state funding. As a result, the annex cells are the size of large living rooms, with two bunks and a stainless steel sink-and-toilet combination almost lost in the emptiness.
But the cells will not stay that roomy for long. Hudson already has extra bunks on order, and plans to convert the two-person cells into four- and even six-bed areas, now that the state has OK'd the building.
As a result, what started as a 171-bed facility under state plans will soon become a 304-bed building.
When Hudson starts to move inmates into the annex - after knocking through a connecting wall that has remained in place for obvious security reasons - he plans to put trustees, work-release and low-security inmates in the new building.
The entire second floor of the existing jail will then be used to house women, and the third and fourth floors will be reserved for maximum security inmates. The first floor will continue to house the kitchen and classification areas that serve the entire jail.
Over the next year, Hudson figures to average about 650 inmates.
"We know that this building is not going to be full when we open it," he said. "If it is, we would have done a poor job of planning.
"I didn't want to overbuild, but I didn't want to underbuild the way they did before."
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff. 1. Roanoke Sheriff Alvin Hudsonby CNB(above) describes the features of the jail annex, expected to open
this month. The cellblocks, for example, have skylights in the day
areas to meet state requirements for natural lighting. 2. Inmates'
street clothes are packed tight in the storage area (left) at the
existing jail. The annex will relieve strain on storage facilities
as well as prisoners. color. 3. A typical cell in the annex has two
bunks - for the moment. Now that the state has OK'd the project, it
will get up to four more, and the 171-bed facility will contain 304
beds.