With a pair television cameras honed in on her, Thurston County Commissioner Cathy Wolfe speaks at the podium during a dedication ceremony for the county's new Accountability and Restitution Center on Thursday afternoon in Tumwater.
Thurston County Commissioner Cathy Wolfe and Thurston County Sheriff John Snaza talks before a dedication ceremony for the county's new Accountability and Restitution Center on Thursday afternoon in Tumwater.
Flanked by her fellow county commissioners and Thurston County Sheriff John Snaza, left, Thurston County Commissioner Cathy Wolfe speaks at the podium during a dedication ceremony for the county's new Accountability and Restitution Center on Thursday afternoon in Tumwater.
Nearly four years after it was completed in 2011, Thurston County Commissioners, Sheriff John Snaza and other county and state officials celebrated the official opening of the county’s Accountability and Restitution Center Thursday.
Commissioner Sandra Romero said she felt a sense of closure at the dedication.
“It’s almost like putting it to bed,” she said.
The facility’s opening was a long time coming for county officials.
“This has been a very long, arduous process,” said Commissioner Cathy Wolfe.
Snaza and the Thurston County Commission signed a letter of intent on Jan. 30, allowing the ARC to open. The $43 million jail was completed on time and under budget in 2011, but due to budgeting issues, the jail was empty until Aug. 15, when the first inmates were moved from the Thurston County Courthouse to the new facility in Tumwater.
“Now that’s behind us and this is pretty exciting,” Romero said.
The 110,000 square-foot ARC holds 488 inmate beds and is staffed by 116 commissioned deputies and civilian workers.
In addition to being a newer, more modern facility for holding inmates awaiting trial and who have been sentenced in Thurston County, the ARC also includes facilities for what the commissioners called “innovative justice” or diversion programs, such as a 7,000-square-foot work-release center and other alternative incarceration programs.
“The old work release didn’t have any room for females … only males got to have that privilege,” Romero said of the county’s old facility. “In this new facility we have room for 18 women and 78 men.”
Romero called the program a “gem.”
The ARC is part of a wider philosophy on criminal justice, officials said Thursday, along with programs such as work release, diversion and therapeutic courts, such as drug court.
“It is phenomenal how they … have turned their lives around,” Commissioner Bud Blake said, of Thurston County’s DUI court in particular. “They walk out of that door with success, a goal and a vision.”
Programs such as Thurston County’s drug or DUI courts have reduced recidivism in the county, or a person’s likeliness to reoffend after serving a sentence, officials said.
According to Thurston County Prosecutor Jon Tunheim, about three quarters of inmates are predicted to reoffend, while just a quarter of the county’s drug court graduates do.
“It lets us focus our resources on the folks that are committing the violent crimes and the serious crimes that do need to have some kind of incarceration,” he said.
Snaza said county officials, community members and members of the criminal justice system work together to fine-tune these programs.
“We see these individuals we help out reintegrate and become volunteers themselves,” Snaza said.
The county is also planning on building a triage center for mentally ill inmates, Romero said. Once built, the center would be a place to evaluate inmates with mental health issues before booking them into the jail’s general population. The bids on the project are set to go out soon, she said.
Snaza said the new jail doesn’t solve crowding issues, but said the county is working to build a “flex unit” that would add room for 120 inmates.
“That’s what we’re working on next,” he said.
