I don't recall offhand when the existing CCDC went into place off the corner of the courthouse, but it was in place in the midish 80's or earlier.
Presently, some folks who are supposed to be held in the CCDC are kept elsewhere, due to the lack of space. For that reason, 75 beds isn't a
proper baseline from which to judge the planned bed increase.
As to 500 beds, some possible explanations, in addition to planned growth, may include:
(a) space to house juveniles in the region. Seems there is often a shortage of available juvenile beds in our corner of the prairie.
(b) space to end the practice of housing county inmates elsewhere. Funds currently paid for such housing could toward the new facility.
(c) space to house county, or state, or fed, inmates for others. Fees paid for such housing go to the facility.
(If this part of the plan, I hope it works out better for Cleveland County than it did for Grady County several years back.)
However, I've not looked at the new jail plans and don't know which, if any, of these possibilities may be real.
As to the alternative sentencing suggestion, this already exists, and has for some time. In appropriate cases (some would argue in too many cases, appropriate or otherwise) the Cleveland County district court judges, just like many other judges across our state, do make use of granting deferred sentences, suspended sentencing, drug courts, community sentencing programs, as well as pre-trial processes like granting own recognizance bonds and even reductions to bail amounts.
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