BY LYNN TURNER
Kalamazoo Gazette
KALAMAZOO, Mich. — “Tent City” is open for business in the Kalamazoo County Jail’s recreation yard.
Low-level offenders may be required to serve all or part of their sentence in the yard’s two military surplus tents that hold up to 12 inmate beds each, jail officials said.
“This is for the people causing quality of life problems -- the shoplifter, the people driving without a license, the ones not paying child support,” Capt. Tom Shull said. “We don’t have the space in here (the jail) for them but this will give the judges an opportunity to do something besides order them to pay cost and fines.
“Now they can say ‘pay or stay’,” Shull said.
Both Kalamazoo County Circuit and District judges will be able to order offenders to spend time in what has been dubbed “Tent City” -- after the “Tents Jail” set up in 1993 next to the Maricopa County Jails in Phoenix, Ariz.
Circuit Judge Gary C. Giguere Jr., who toured Tent City on Thursday afternoon, said he would have no problem sentencing minor offenders to the new section.
“It looked like it was set up right to house prisoners,” said Giguere, who spent five years in the Army National Guard and some time in tents just like the ones in the jail yard. “It’s no frills but it looked like it met with constitutional standards for humane treatment of prisoners.”
The jail, which is licensed to hold 317 inmates, is habitually overcrowded. As a result, scofflaws have often been the first out on early release programs in order to keep inmates with more violent offenses inside.
Tent City will be temporary residence for minor offenders but will not be used as an overflow facility for the inmates inside, Shull said.
Only male inmates will be housed in the tents, he said.
In addition to the tents, which have plastic flooring, there are portable toilet facilities, picnic tables, telephones, flood lights and double 12-foot fences topped with razor and barbed wire ringing the yard.
The inmates will have a 24-hour guard in the yard, Shull said. Bug spray, he said, “will be available.”
Tent City is likely to remain in place until the first of October, he said.
Copyright 2008 Kalamazoo Gazette