$46 million project underway to remodel aging detention facility

By Ashley Portillo

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    ARAPAHOE, Colorado (KCNC) — The first phase of a $46 million renovation and expansion was just completed at the Arapahoe County Detention Facility. The project just brought a newly designed kitchen and laundry facility to the jail and will soon also help with expanding mental health services. The changes will make things more efficient at the jail, which has been aging as well.

Arapahoe County Sheriff Tyler Brown said when the Arapahoe County Detention Facility was built in the 1980s, it was built to house less than 400 inmates. However, the jail now houses around 900 people daily.

“One of the main things we noticed is that our kitchen and laundry facilities weren’t keeping up with our average daily population,” Brown told CBS Colorado.

The jail needed a bigger modernized space, so it relocated the kitchen and laundry facilities to a different area. The new laundry area has industrial washers and dryers, and it was designed to be more efficient with doing large loads of laundry for a growing inmate population. The kitchen has new ovens, a bakery and kosher area too, improving meal preparation and cooking.

“This was definitely a need to address some of the issues here at the county detention facility,” Brown said.

Arapahoe County Board of County Commissioners allocated $46 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds toward the project. All the commissioners, including Commissioner Lesley Summey, tour the jail every year, which is required by state law.

“We have all been in there,” Summey told CBS Colorado. “We have all seen what it is like and to see how people work there to provide the folks who are incarcerated the best possible facilities for the situation, and they needed improving. We had a kitchen and laundry facility that was in desperate need of upgrading and expansion.”

Commissioner Summey also recently saw the jail’s upgrades.

“If you have to be there, you still want to do good work if you want to rehabilitate, so those laundry and kitchen facilities are amazing,” Summey said.

Relocating the laundry and kitchen has also made room for other improvements such as adding more than 40 additional medical and behavioral health beds, bringing the total number of beds to more than 60. This will improve mental health care services and provide more opportunities to rehabilitate people.

Sheriff Brown said the needs of inmates have changed over the past few decades, and many inmates are dealing with substance use disorder or mental health crises. While inmates are still being held for their criminal activities, this renovation means they can better help people in custody because they’re not just housing inmates, they’re treating them too in hopes of reducing recidivism rates.

“We look at the individuals we have in custody and the best way we can treat them. This is going to allow us the opportunity to have better facilities to help those individuals,” Brown said. “If we address those other issues, I think we have a better chance of reducing their recidivism, and they’re returning back to our community better than when they got to jail.”

“We do the best we can in Arapahoe County to make sure that all of our residents are serviced, and if we have folks there that need those services, we are going to provide them the best way we possibly can,” Summey said.

Expanding the behavioral and mental health beds is expected to be finished by 2025. The total project for the renovations and expansions is expected to be about $46 million.

In 2019, voters voted “no” on a ballot initiative that would build a new jail. Sheriff Brown also acknowledged the jail is outdated, and in the future, they still need to consider building a new facility altogether. The new laundry and kitchen facilities were designed however to be incorporated into a new facility in the future.

Commissioner Summey also added, with voters voting on “debrucing” TABOR in November, they learned public safety was a top priority. She believes putting money toward the jail renovations is part of improving public safety.

“We found that the things that were most important to the community was public safety, roads, bridges and the human condition in Arapahoe County,” Summey said. “So we are excited that we are able to help a little bit with that with the ARPA funds for the jail expansion, and also having funds to address some of the things in public safety that our residents care about.”

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