When private jail service provider CoreCivic announced it was pulling out of management of Hamilton County’s Silverdale Detention Center at the end of 2020, a spokesperson for the company said it would have needed a $5.63 increase in the per diem prisoner rate to “see a number of changes implemented to improve the safety, security and operational stability of the facility.”
Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond said at the time, according to newspaper archives, the company’s terms were “cost prohibitive.”
Next Wednesday, though, the Hamilton County Commission is expected to vote on a nearly $6.3 million expenditure to address issues with the facility’s aging and flawed security system.
Fortunately, no new money will be needed to fund the security updates. Instead, the funds for a contract with Wisconsin-based Johnson Controls Fire Protection for security upgrades will come from a $10 million bond issue from 2020.
Jimi Hammond, information technology manager for the sheriff’s office and the son of Sheriff Hammond, intimated to this page Thursday that moving from a workhouse facility to a maximum security jail is like apples and oranges when it comes to security.
Silverdale, from the beginning, he told county commissioners Wednesday, never had the type of security technology required for maximum security facilities.
Hammond said CoreCivic operated the workhouse under the county’s general budget until 2017, when the sheriff’s office became responsible for some positions there.
But it was not until the beginning of 2021, when the sheriff’s office took over all management, “that we began to get an accurate picture of the security.”
Before that, he said, “we did not see really anything up close. We did not have the keys to the physical plant.”
It would have been ideal to have kept prisoners at the Hamilton County Jail downtown while security upgrades were being put in place, “but that was not even a reality. It was impossible to staff both places,” he said. “We simply could not do it.”
Instead, by the time the last prisoners were transferred there from the jail in June 2021, sheriff’s office officials had some idea of what they faced.
Typical maintenance issues of a county workhouse were being addressed, Hammond said, but on a different timetable than they might be if it had been a maximum-security jail.
Silverdale “was going to be just fine” if it had remained only a workhouse, he said.
Instead, as of today, a third of the two-decades-old cameras are inoperable, the operable cameras only render poor quality footage, and storage capacity for the cameras is limited. Plus, all of the facility’s intercoms are offline, some locks fail to meet fire code, and 49 of the 115 electronic entry locks require repair.
“We began our walk-throughs to try to assess the situation, and our IT division immediately knew that the electronic security systems would need to be replaced,” Hammond told the county commission. “Unfortunately, we also collectively shuddered at this realization because we realized that this piece of the puzzle was going to take an extreme amount of planning and effort to execute or to bring before you even today.”
Thankfully, no serious breaches of security have occurred with the security flaws, and no nearby residents have been threatened, while the sheriff’s office studied the scope of what would need to be upgraded.
Those concerns, though, are what Commissioner Chip Baker seemed to be getting at with a question in Wednesday’s meeting.
“I would think surveillance is huge – hugely important,” Baker said. “Why is this just coming up?”
Johnson Controls Fire Protection already had won the contract for security as CoreCovic planned its phase one upgrade at Silverdale, Hammond told this page, but our “needs changed,” and the company was asked to come up with a new plan for a “unified system” for 14 total buildings.
Nevertheless, he said, the process of determining all the security needs was a lengthy one.
The sheriff’s office was aware it was taking over a facility with just “bare bones” with which to work, Sheriff Hammond told the county commission.
If the security contract resolution is approved next week, installation is expected to take 13 months.
If it is approved, with the county now in charge of Silverdale, we trust worries about security – or at least a regular evaluation of security – will never be a problem again.