Hall County to Debut New Correctional Facility

Hall County to Debut New Correctional Facility

After about a year of construction, a new home for the correctional institute of Hall County is close to completion. Since 2013, plans to renovate or reconstruct the building have been going on, and now the new facility is scheduled to open in late November, said Walt Davis, warden for the Hall County Correctional Institute.

The outdated correctional institute was built in 1963 and will be replaced by the new facility. As reported by The Gainesville Times, the old facility had already undergone remodeling in 1982, as a result the county opted not to remodel it again because it would cost more than building a new on.

The new facility is located between the old correctional institute and the jail on Barber Road in Gainesville. It will have fewer jail cells compared to the old facility because recently there has been lower inmate population numbers. Four cell blocks will house 50 inmates each, which is 40 fewer inmates than before.

The new facility’s location and size dictated its capacity, and because of the Hall County’s criminal justice reform efforts there have been fewer inmates in the system, explained Davis.

In addition, an inmate mobile construction crew is in charge of the construction, which means the county is constructing a facility worth $6.5 million for $3.2 million by using the Georgia Department of Corrections inmate labor program, said Davis.
The 27,000-square-foot facility will have a central command center which will allow officers to view surveillance cameras and monitor inmates’ activities. The new facility will also have a management system, full climate control and fully electronic locking. Unlike its predecessor, the facility will feature laundry operations on site.

The facility is being built with SPLOST funds and will consist of a special transitional housing unit for the new Re-entry Accountability Court Transition (REACT) program. The program is one of its kind and consists of educational and vocational training in addition to substance abuse treatment. Inmates also get the opportunity to get on-the-job experience because they are given the opportunity to working with local businesses once they have progressed to the work release portion of the program.

The Correctional Institution serves and house inmates who work daily performing different tasks for county departments. These inmates are valuable to the county, according to a report by county, in 2013; these inmates provided the county with about $2.5 million in free labor.

Compared to the facilities that were built in the 1960s, the design of the new facility has significant improvements that offer a more comprehensive approach, considering that the facility has a central control unit which allows staff to monitor inmates movement throughout the facility and also have proximity for supervision with officers. The entire facility’s design provides better security, said Davis.

The facility is scheduled to be opened in November and so far everything is on track. The only parts that have not been completed are electronic locking and the jail management system, said Davis. The new facility comes as a relief to both inmates and the Georgia Department of Corrections.
“It truly is just worn out. It runs 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It never shuts down,” Davis said.