PORT ANGELES — The Clallam County jail is currently exceeding its capacity by about 25 men and women who are waiting for court appearances, transfers or serving short sentences.
It’s been an ongoing problem, said Sheriff Joe Martin, and cramped conditions have led to increase in fights among inmates and concerns about deputies’ safety.
“Nobody is happy about it, including us, but that’s the way it is,” Martin said.
Next month police agency representatives, judges and prosecutors will meet to discuss the problem and come up with possible solutions, he said.
One idea not being discussed is building a new jail, said Clallam County Commissioner Steve Tharinger, D-Dungeness.
Martin said he understands why taxpayers would not want to pay more to add capacity to the jail.
Overwhelming defeat
A ballot measure in 1997 that would have raised the county’s sales tax by one-tenth of a cent to pay for 30 new beds in an expanded jail was overwhelmingly defeated by voters, 13,001 no votes to 9,491 yes.
“Citizens don’t like new jails and paying more in tax dollars. I can appreciate that,” Martin said.
A consultant’s study done before the ballot measure went to voters said that by 2005 the jail would need beds to lodge 205 inmates.
One solution may be to re-open the jail’s Special Detention Unit, a minimum-security wing shuttered after budget cuts in 2002. The 24-bed unit housed inmates in the work release program.
“It would be short-term help,” Martin said, “get the pressure off.”