No matter now much Baltimore County spends to build jail cells, it can't keep up with the supply of inmates.
The county will need to spend $77 million for a new jail by 1999 to house as many as 1,248 prisoners, according to a team of consultants who studied the county's exploding inmate population.
That comes on top of the $17.5 million the county and state have just spent for a 216-bed addition to the county's 13-year-old detention center in Towson, not to mention the start-up costs for a 100-bed drunken driving jail that opened in Owings Mills in the fall.
Even a new jail will need two additions by 2014 if current trends continue, the study says.
That will cost yet another $19.4 million.
The news did not sit well with County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger III.
Although he has not reviewed the consultants' report, he said building more jail cells is not high on his priority list.
"The focus for me is schools," he declared, adding that the county has no money for a new jail.
The study shows that the county can't build jail cells as fast as it can fill them up. In fact, the inmate population in the county has increased 233 percent since 1985, three years after the main detention center on Kenilworth Drive was built.
The spurt in the jail population has forced the county to continue using two outmoded jail buildings, one of which dates back to 1854. The old jails, a few blocks away, were to have been closed when the 326-bed detention center opened in 1982. The burgeoning inmate population kept them open.
The study said a new jail would allow the worn-out buildings to be closed by 1999 and would bring the detention center population closer to its intended level.
The plan for the new jail was conceived by a joint venture of Correctional Services Group, Inc., of Kansas City, Mo., and Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall Architects of Baltimore. The $150,000 study was authorized in 1993, after Maryland budget officials pushed the county to produce a 20-year jail space plan. The state paid 75 percent of the cost of the detention center addition, which opened late last year.
The study outlines a catch-up strategy for the county, which, like many other jurisdictions across the nation, was unprepared for soaring arrest rates of the late 1980s and 1990s.
XTC "I think the basic projections are very correct," James Dean, the detention center administrator, said of the consultants' findings.
Besides a total jail population that now hovers just over 1,000 and threatens to set records every day, new trends are causing headaches, he said. One is an emphasis on charging violent juvenile offenders as adults.
"I've got 20 juveniles over here now," he said.
Mr. Dean said juveniles often have to be segregated from older inmates to protect smaller, less aggressive teens from adult inmates or to protect nonviolent adult inmates from youngsters who are physically imposing and aggressive.
Demographic projections in the study are also discouraging. The number of males between 20 and 34 years old in the general population -- the pool that provides the largest inmate group -- has increased by 44.5 percent over the last 20 years.
Kurt J. Buckler, chief of design in the county's Bureau of Engineering, said he wants state budget officials to review the report. After that, the county can order a second study to select a new jail site.
The consultants now recommend a 40- to 50-acre site away from Towson.
Although location is a touchy subject for unwanted buildings such as jails, county officials have talked in the past of a jail on the Eastside, where many inmates live and vacant industrial land is available.
The study said the complex of old jail facilities at Bosley Avenue and Towsontown Boulevard, known now as the Courthouse Court Facility, should be closed in four years. That complex includes the original 1854 stone jail, the 1956 county jail and five trailers enclosed by fences. Together, these now house about 400 work-release, female and weekend prisoners.
Mr. Dean said the windows of the 1956 jail are so warped they leak heat "like a sieve," straining an equally worn-out boiler. The study said the building was "unsatisfactory" architecturally and mechanically. Temperatures on the third floor often reach 120 degrees in summer, Mr. Dean said.
About 530 inmates routinely are housed at the newer Kenilworth Drive Detention Center, but the 216-bed addition there hasn't helped relieve overcrowding because major renovations now are under way on the original section.
The study proposes reducing the Kenilworth Drive population to an average of 406 inmates, most of whom would be awaiting trial.
The proposed new jail would house convicted criminals serving sentences of up to 18 months. Up to 288 beds there would be reserved for inmates who present problems because of behavior, disease, medical needs, or protective custody requirements.