By Michael Davidson
The Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado)
BROOMFIELD, Colo. — Unless you’re in the back of a police car, the Broomfield County jail is hard to find.
Located on the edge of town south of Colo. 128, it sits on a tree-lined parkway, just past an office park and a nice apartment complex.
It is so well hidden, workers at nearby gas stations are surprised there’s a jail nearby when they’re asked for directions.
The illusion continues on the inside. The booking room could be confused for an ER waiting room or the main office of a high school.
Then a thick, heavy metal door slams shut, and suddenly it is clear -- you can’t leave unless they let you.
Those elements make Broomfield’s jail one of the most modern in the nation. The combination of technology, innovative design and new thinking on how to treat inmates makes the facility a model other communities use when they build new jails.
“They’ve been using the Broomfield Detention Center since 2002 as a model,” Police Chief Tom Deland said.
Elected officials and law enforcement officers from outside Colorado are frequent visitors. Many come to the jail as part of their training with the National Institute of Corrections, a branch of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Prisons.
“It’s a very nice, well-designed facility. They did a really good planning process,” said Fran Zandi, an official with the institute.
One area of focus is the low number of staff needed to run the jail. The jail’s reliance on technology lets the department use about half the staff old-style jails use, Sgt. Chris Terry said. Terry worked as a guard and then administrator at the jail. He’s helping with its nearly $16 million expansion that will double its capacity.
Expansion of the jail will begin this summer, Deland said. The new wing should be complete by late summer 2010, and inmates should move in January 2011, Deland said.
The jail’s reliance on technology is apparent from the time an inmate enters the booking room. The first thing an inmate touches is a state-of-the-art electronic fingerprint scanner. Images of fingers, palms and the outside of the hand are captured and uploaded into a computer.
The images are relayed to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, where the prints are run through the statewide Automated Fingerprint Identification System database. Police will know within minutes if an inmate gives them a phony name. More importantly, police will know what other crimes inmates have been charged with, prior convictions and whether they’ve done jail time.
“We know for sure who they are before they are released,” Deland said.
That can keep a potentially dangerous criminal arrested on a minor charge in Broomfield from being released.
Security cameras monitor all corners of the facility. They send video to the central control room, where an officer controls every door in the jail with an electronic lock system.
A video link to the Broomfield Combined Court allows most inmates to be arraigned from the jail. The arrangement means fewer officers have to be dedicated to transporting inmates.
“All of these things really save us manpower,” Deland said.
Visitors from other communities note how different the Broomfield jail is from traditional jails.
“A lot of them are coming from places with either no jails or jails with bars, which is a big difference (from Broomfield),” Terry said.
They also learn about how police, city officials and architects addressed the concerns of the jail’s future neighbors. Before it was built, the jail was protested by many nearby Westminster residents.
Along with concerns about safety, they didn’t want to live next to high chain-link fences, guard towers and razor wire.
Their concerns influenced the decision to make the jail as unobtrusive as possible, Deland said.
It worked. When the jail had an open house in March to discuss its upcoming expansion, members of the media outnumbered members of the public.
But aesthetics don’t only make the jail more acceptable for its neighbors. They affect the inmate experience as well.
Instead of staying in their cells behind bars, most inmates stay in cells with wooden doors. They spend most of their time in a large dayroom, which looks a lot like a high school cafeteria. During the day they can read, play games or watch television.
The point isn’t to coddle inmates, Terry said, but to keep them compliant.
“Their attitude and behavior (reflects) how you treat them,” he said.
Inmates who cause trouble, or who need to be separated from the general population for their safety, stay in harsher quarters and spend most of their time in their cells.
It gives inmates an incentive to behave.
“There’s a reward for them if they follow the rules,” Deland said.
In the dayrooms, a single officer watches over as many as 60 inmates. The officer works an 11½-hour shift and is in near constant contact with inmates, Terry said.
Experts call the approach “direct supervision.” The close contact gives officers a better sense of inmates’ mood and if trouble is coming, Terry said.
On an average day 92 inmates are housed in the jail designed to hold 80. Some inmates must sleep on mats on cell floors.
The $15.9 million expansion will more than double the size of the jail, giving it a capacity of 218 inmates. The expansion will add new training rooms, equipment for video visitations and an area for a work-release program, a first for Broomfield.
Copyright 2009 Daily Camera and Boulder Publishing, LLC