The Kern County Justice Facility at Lerdo has been a decade in the making, costing over a hundred million dollars.
Now, Kern’s newest lockup is about to open for business.
“We’ll be populating this facility with inmates next weekend,” said Kern County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Tyson Davis as he proudly showed off the new massive structure, adjacent to the older Lerdo Pre-Trial Facility.
“The other facility, the newest facility we have was built in 1987 so you have 30 plus years of technology that has gone into this facility,” said Davis.
Deputies showed off an infirmary complete with multiple exam rooms, dental hygiene areas, and an X-ray machine.
This new facility cost $128 million –$100 million funded by a state grant– and the jail can hold 825 inmates.
But what truly sets this jail apart according to the Sheriff’s Department, is its focus on preventing inmates from returning to prison.
“This facility was designed to provide programs and tools to help inmates get their general education, to learn how to deal with anger management, child parenting, domestic violence,” explained Davis.
With classrooms and program rooms and Kern Behavioral Health and Recovery service workers on site.
“It seems that there’s more people that are coming to jail that suffer with mental illness so having the partners from [Kern Behavioral Health] come and help us with that is a key winner,” said Davis.
Yet after earlier this year Sheriff Donny Youngblood reported more than a hundred incidents of inmates breaking through locks on their cells, the question is are these new locks secure?
“This is a higher level security facility, the locks are more modern and we believe that the inmates will not be able to defeat these locks,” said Davis.
The jail will have its ribbon cutting next Wednesday and begin to take inmates not long after.
