TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

Avon Park Correctional To Add 80 Beds

ADVERTISEMENT

By DOUG CARMAN

Highlands Today

Published: July 29, 2008

AVON PARK - The Florida Department of Corrections plans to add 80 beds to the Avon Park Correctional Institute's work camp, a spokeswoman said.
Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger from Tallahassee said the prison will create 40 new beds each for two of the camp's dorms. A timeline for the expansion was not set yet, but she said the construction will both start and finish within a year.

The prison's work camp currently has 427 inmates and only 431 beds, so the $300,000 expansion will let the work camp hold 511 medium- to low-risk felons. This is part of a statewide plan to expand bed spaces in the prison system's existing facilities.

"This is a relatively small project," Plessinger said.

Unlike general inmates, work camp prisoners are put to work on the streets, usually with such projects as road construction.

The main prison has a total of 956 beds split between three dormitory-style "open bay" housing units and three "room housing units" where prisoners share rooms, in addition to the work camp. DOC spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff said the main part of the prison had 842 inmates Monday.

The prison's population fluctuates normally because inmates are occasionally transferred from one prison to another within the state's system, Rackleff said.

Though the prison population over the past months has not fluctuated abnormally, the number of inmates at the Highlands County Jail has dropped since May, when an average of 497 inmates were incarcerated, Highlands County Sheriff's Maj. David Paeplow said.

"We had over 500 in here on several days during the month," Paeplow said.

This month, the jail has 457 of its 512 beds filled. Despite the empty beds, the spike during spring caused the county to decide against taking inmates from other jails, like it was last year.

Paeplow said "a combination of events" caused the spike, but he did not get too specific.

"It's just fluctuations due to court schedules. You can't attribute it to one thing like the grow-house busts," he said, alluding to the ongoing rash of arrests made since the start of 2007.

The county jail only takes in inmates whose sentences are no longer than a year.

Doug Carman can be reached at 386-5838 or dcarman@highlandstoday.com

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT