The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Facility will be a first in Davidson

By IAN DEMSKY, Staff Writer
Wednesday, 02/23/05
Wade, 25, is not quite getting a room of her own, but it will be nice to have a door on the shower and to sleep without 50 others breathing all around her in the night.

Being a woman in a jail built for men means she can't work in many of
the jail assignments or move freely through the hallways when male
inmates are present.

''I feel like we aren't getting as much recognition as we should or
getting as much freedom in jail as we should,'' Wade said in an
interview yesterday at the Metro Detention Center.

The opening of the women's facility, shaped like twin butterflies,
should help alleviate long-standing overcrowding issues.

Nearly 1,300 inmates routinely live at the privately run Metro Detention
Facility — a jail designed to hold 892 prisoners. In the past, crowding
has threatened the jail's state certification.

The 500 additional beds at the aptly named ''Correctional Development
Center-Female'' will bring the overcrowded Metro Detention Facility back to its intended capacity.

A grand-opening ceremony is scheduled for this afternoon, but inmates
will not start moving in until the beginning of next month.

In recent years, women have increasingly found themselves behind bars.
The number of women in jails more than doubled between 1990 and 2003,
according to the U.S. Department of Justice statistics.

In 1994, 118 women were jailed in Davidson County at any given time.
Today that number is more than 350.

That changing demographic highlighted the need for a separate facility, sheriff's officials said.

The new women's jail was designed with the specific needs of female
inmates in mind.

''When it comes to detention facilities, women have often played second fiddle to men,'' Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall said yesterday. They're placed in facilities designed for men ''wherever we could find space.''

The new jail at 5113 Harding Place, in the correctional complex behind the Metro Police South Precinct station, features:

• Double-occupancy rooms instead of bunkhouse-style dormitories that add an element of privacy.

• Single-person showers with doors rather than group showers.

• Child-friendly visitation rooms stocked with donated toys to foster
relationships between female inmates and their children.

• One wing of the jail will participate in a ''cell dogs'' program. The women will care for dogs from Metro's Animal Control facility, located just behind the jail. The program, which has been used successfully with male domestic violence prisoners, prepares the animals for adoption while teaching the inmates nurturing skills.

• It can house minimum-, medium- and maximum-security inmates.

The women's jail is part of a larger project that includes a 300-bed
minimum security facility for men that opened in October. It also
includes the addition of up to 380 beds at the Metro Detention Facility, for which $10.2 million has already been earmarked. The project is intended to keep overcrowding in check for the next seven to 10 years, Hall said.

He hopes to fight crowding by offering various educational and
therapeutic programs that will help inmates stay out of jail in the
future.

''It's nice to have a facility that focuses on us and on getting us back into society,'' said Karen Phillips, 39, who will probably be living in the new facility until September. ''It's not like they have a magic cure-all, but they have so many resources available.''

Metro inmate populations

Here are the Metro inmate totals and capacity as of Monday:

Criminal Justice Center — 648 out of 688

Hill Detention Center — 461 out of 474

Correctional Development Center-Male — 457 out of 600

Correctional Development Center-Female — 0 out of 510 (opening in March)

Offender Re-Entry Center — 210 out of 300

Metro Detention Facility — 1261 (including 370 women) for a capacity of
892

Source: Davidson County Sheriff's Office

Cells surround an eating and bathing area at the new Metro women's jail,
Correction Development Center-Female. A grand-opening ceremony is
scheduled for this afternoon, but inmates will not start moving in until
the beginning of next month.
JOHN PARTIPILO / STAFF
http://tennessean.com/growth/archives/05/01/66015069.shtml