By Jeff Horseman
The Press-Enterprise
RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Calif. — And you thought Tide was expensive.
Riverside County officials estimate it will cost $5 million to upgrade facilities to handle 676,000 pounds a year of laundry from inmates to be housed in future jail expansions. The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Jan. 7, unanimously gave the go-ahead to start planning an expansion of the main jail laundry plant at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning.
The county’s jail bed shortage led to the early release of almost 8,000 inmates as of November. Officials plan to add almost 1,300 beds to the Indio jail by 2017 at an estimated cost of $267 million. The county also wants to add as many as 600 beds to Larry Smith, although funding for that expansion has yet to be secured.
Once those beds are added, it will be too much laundry for Larry Smith’s outdated facility to handle, a county staff report read.
Full story: RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Upgrading jail laundry could cost $5 million