Inmate quality of life impacted by construction at Salt Lake County Jail

SALT LAKE CITY — From fewer hot meals to constant lights, inmates are feeling the effects of construction at the Salt Lake County Jail. 

The jail was built more than 25 years ago. Chief Deputy Matt Dumont from the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office said they are now upgrading some of the infrastructure and updating their security systems.

“We’ve got quite a bit of construction going on,” Dumont said. “All these projects sort of hit at once. We usually like to stagger them out a little bit, but they all came together at the same (time).”

Constant light

The construction is impacting inmates in a couple of different ways.

First, they are unable to turn off the lights while they do security upgrades. Dumont said the inmates are divided into four sections, or pods. Upgrades are being made one pod at a time, and during that pod’s turn, the lights remain on, so inmates experience 24/7 brightness.

“There’s really … no way around it,” Dumont explained. “So to accommodate that, we’ve issued sleeping masks to all the individuals in the pod.”

Each pod is experiencing this for about a month at a time. Dumont said they never had the lights completely out at night, but typically they would have been dimmed.

Kitchen remodel

The kitchen is also completely shut down for a remodel. Dumont said the upgrade was overdue, after serving 7,000 meals a day for 25 years.

“Our kitchen needed a lot of attention,” Dumont stated. “We’re undergoing a complete kitchen remodel, which has changed up the way that we’ve served meals. We do continue to serve one hot meal a day, as is the standard in corrections. We traditionally had done two hot meals a day.”

Dumont said they have had to arrange for pre-made meals to be delivered and kept on warmers. A source told KSL NewsRadio inmates are being served a lot of sandwiches and similar foods in the meantime. 

Mold concerns

Meanwhile, evidence of the building’s age is being noticed by those who visit the jail. Some people have noticed what looks like mold on the walls. However, Dumont said the health department has inspected spots like that, and said it is not mold.

“We get, from time to time, leaks in our roof. And as the water creeps down through the roof to the ceiling, it discolors the ceiling. It also peels away paint and things like that,” Dumont explained.

Dumont said once their maintenance crew fixes the roof and it dries up, they will also be able to fix it cosmetically. Dumont went on to say that if mold is ever spotted, they would take immediate action to remediate it so that it does not spread.

All of these various construction projects are expected to last through the end of the year.

Renovations within Salt Lake County corrections facilities have been top of mind in recent months for county and state leaders. In February, the county approved an added sales tax to fund jail improvement projects, as well as the addition of more beds for inmates at the Oxbow jail.

Related: Salt Lake County Council approves sales tax increase