3 commissioners back sheriff’s plan for tent jail
A majority of El Paso County commissioners on Thursday backed Sheriff Terry Maketa’s plan to house jail inmates in a tent.
Maketa doesn’t need County Commission approval to proceed with the plan, but three commissioners spoke in favor of it after the sheriff briefed them on what he sees as a solution to jail crowding.
Maketa said he is leaning toward leasing a 12,000-square-foot tent instead of buying one. Leasing would cost about $9,000 a month, including the cost to heat it to at least 65 degrees, as required by state law.
Commissioner Sallie Clark called Maketa’s plan “innovative” and said she hopes it will drive home the point that crowding at the county jail has become a crisis.
She rejected the idea that tents are inhumane, pointing out that thousands of U.S. soldiers live in them. Clark suggested that housing lawbreakers in tents might make them less likely to repeat their crimes.
“Hopefully it will help us with our recidivism rate,” she said.
Elena Bost, a member of the prison reform group CURE of Southern Colorado, told commissioners she opposes incarcerating inmates in tents.
She said she worries Maketa’s plan will be patterned after the Tent City jails in Maricopa County, Ariz.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio houses inmates in tents, makes male inmates wear pink underwear and intentionally humiliates them as a publicity stunt, according to information Bost presented to commissioners.
“That man should be in prison as far as I’m concerned,” Bost said of Arpaio.
“Yet he keeps getting reelected,” Clark replied.
Bost also suggested Maketa is trying to “sneak through” his tent plan before people can question it.
Maketa objected to Bost’s suggestions.
“We’re not Maricopa County,” he said. “We’re not issuing pink underwear and I’m not trying to sneak anything past anyone. I have a statutory obligation to accept inmates and house them and put a roof over their heads.”
Maketa said he has studied what Maricopa County has done and will learn from its mistakes.
For example, Maketa plans to stake the tent down using concrete blocks instead of spikes that inmates can use as weapons.
Bost said fewer laws and shorter sentences are a better answer to jail crowding than tents.
Commissioner Jim Bensberg pointed out that the sheriff and county don’t make the laws or set sentencing standards.
“We’re concerned here, too (about prison crowding),” Bensberg said. “But I’m just reminded of the old axiom, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”
The tent Maketa is considering would house up to 180 inmates at the north parking lot of the Criminal Justice Center. It could be erected by the middle of March and would house inmates serving short sentences and those on work-release — a program that will be re-activated.
The cost and who would pay for it need to be worked out, but Maketa said it’s the cheapest option available to get the county through the nine months before the downtown Metro jail is renovated.
Maketa has been lobbying for a new jail for months, and county officials are drawing up plans for a $25 million to $40 million expansion.
