ARLINGTON – The inability to hire qualified jail custodial officers has ended a Snohomish County proposal to reopen a mothballed jail to help the state relieve a problem with parole violators.
Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon announced Monday that the county has halted planning to reactivate the 183-bed Indian Ridge corrections facility near Arlington.
Hiring sufficient staff for Indian Ridge, while maintaining a regular staff at the Snohomish County Jail, was critical in any decision to proceed, Snohomish County Department of Corrections director Steve Thompson said Monday.
With help from the state, the county hoped to hire 33 new people to operate Indian Ridge, Thompson said.
At the county level, potential custodial officers must go through rigorous background checks and psychological testing and take lie detector tests, Thompson said.
The county and state were not able to find enough qualified people to augment the county jail staff. More than 250 people recently were interviewed and only one was hired, according to a statement issued Monday by Reardon.
In March, Reardon proposed exploring interim use of the facility to Gov. Chris Gregoire. The idea was to reduce chances that the state Department of Corrections would have to release community custody violators due to a lack of jail bed space.
The county also hoped to earn some money by housing state prisoners.
Under the proposal, the county would have moved some of its minimum-security inmates to Indian Ridge, and up to 170 state community custody violators would have been housed in the secure Snohomish County Jail in Everett.
The governor’s office Monday said the decision in Snohomish County has not changed things for her.
“She left it up to (the corrections department) and the county to work it out,” spokeswoman Holly Armstrong said. “From her perspective, it doesn’t change what she directed (the state) DOC to do.”
State corrections officials had hoped to use the Snohomish County jail beds to make sure that ex-convicts, who were sent back to jail for violating terms of their release, don’t get out simply because of prison or jail overcrowding.
Because of overcrowding, some 80 convicted criminals were released in King County in February, prompting a public furor.
Gregoire then directed state officials not to release prisoners due to a lack of bed space.
“We were looking to Snohomish County more of a long-term solution,” state Department of Corrections spokesman Gary Larson said. In the meantime, the department has been placing parole violators in prisons around the state, as well as county jails.
“The Indian Ridge option was a good idea but it did not work out,” Larson said. “It does not put us in an immediate situation where we’re not able to comply with the governor’s wishes.”
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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