From Riverside Press-Enterprise:
Stopgaps are not a coherent plan for meeting Riverside County’s jail space needs. Pouring money into temporary fixes runs up costs to taxpayers without providing any credible solution. County supervisors need to develop a realistic, long-range plan for housing a growing number of local inmates, instead of relying on expensive short-term expedients.
The growing price tag for the county’s latest temporary jail fix — an expansion of the existing jail in Indio — only demonstrates the folly of dithering on a credible long-term approach. The cost of adding space for more than 1,200 inmates in Indio by 2017 now stands at $267 million, a $30 million increase over the project’s initial estimates. And that figure does not include the related expenses of demolishing existing facilities to make way for the jail expansion, and finding new quarters for displaced county operations. The final price for the project is nearing, and could surpass, $300 million.
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