By STEVEN BEARDSLEY
Naples Daily News
LEE COUNTY, Fla. — When temperatures dropped Tuesday night, staff at the Lee County jail’s stockade turned to tarpaulins as part of the solution.
The plastic sheets were needed to cover the jammed-open louvre windows on the 30-year-old barracks-style cell blocks.
“There really isn’t any technology in the stockade,” noted Sgt. David Velez, second in command at the Ortiz Road jail campus.
Nearly 800 inmates and their guards will enter modernity - the jail version, at least - when they move to the county’s new four-story expansion building this morning.
Left behind is a facility with more problems than perks. Originally built in 1976 and continuously expanded, the stockade is a series of single-story barracks, each with a wall exposed to the weather. An overhanging roof shields inmates from the rain, but wind and heat enter with ease.
The stockade can be heated in the winter, but it lacks air conditioning. Its moving parts have become less reliable with time: Doors are easily jammed by creative inmates, and the occasional lightening storm has been known to cut power and unlock doors.
“The facility is so old, that it has sort of worn its welcome a bit,” said Sheriff Mike Scott.
The move would be just as good for guards as inmates, he said.
The building is air-conditioned, and inmate movement will be controlled as it is in the adjoining core jail building, through a computer console near each cell block. The new building’s infirmary also will be larger than any other in the system.
Beyond replacing an outdated building, the expansion frees up space in an overcrowded jail system, providing 784 new beds, compared to the stockade’s 400. Some inmates from the system’s three other buildings in downtown Fort Myers and on Ortiz Street will also move into the new building.
For Lee County, portable plastic bunks have become a common cell block sight in recent years as the inmate population has soared. The system hovered around 25 to 30 percent overcrowded before the expansion; that level now falls to about 7 percent.
It comes at a price. Lee County spent $53 million to build the expansion as well as millions to hire about 80 new deputies to staff the building.
Lee County officials are already looking into building another jail in the near future. The stockade will be demolished later this year.
The moving process begins at 7 a.m. today and is scheduled to end by noon, Velez said. The inmates, a mixture of men serving county sentences and others awaiting trial, will be moved according to their new cell block. A County Emergency Response Team (think SWAT) will be on hand to keep an eye on things.
Scott expected the process would be straightforward.
“It’s a big undertaking, but we move people daily,” he said.
Copyright 2008 Collier County Publishing Company