Stanislaus County will need $40 million in state funds to create a new jail focused on the rehabilitation and education of inmates.
Sheriff’s Department officials say it will take up to $44.7 million to fund the jail’s new infrastructure, with $4.7 million coming from local funds. The proposed jail will include vocational and transitional education programs to integrate inmates back into society, according to a report by the Modesto Bee.
“We want to give them tools and resources needed to be successful and not reoffend,” Sheriff Adam Christianson told the Bee.
If county supervisors seek state funding and their proposal is approved in January, the new jail could be completed by 2018.
The services would be focused on job-skill acquisition training, education/rehabilitation programs and addiction/mental health services. All of these programs are to help lower level inmates fit back into society more productively, according to the Bee.
The new jail project, called REACT (RE-Entry and Enhanced Alternative to Custodial Training) would be constructed near the Public Safety Center on Hackett Road in Stanislaus, the Bee reported.
Personnel from the downtown jail will staff the new 288-bed center, according to Christianson. Combined with other expansion projects, the new complex would allow the Stanislaus County to house an additional 444 inmates, the Bee reported.
The new jail is consistent with California’s plan to reduce its prison population by shifting the state’s responsibility for lower-level offenders to county governments, according to the Bee.