New jail planning not new for Chamberlain
Garland County’s new chief deputy of corrections, Mark Chamberlain, had to drive halfway across the country to start his first day on the job last week, but the new job doesn’t feel too different from his old one, so far.
“My last assignment there for the final three years of my career there was to help with the construction, occupation and ultimately the operation of a brand new detention center,” Chamberlain said Thursday.
“Ironically, it’s a miniature version of the facility that I opened back in 2011. It’s a great design for that facility. Everything they’ve done is very smart. They are oversizing the service area of the facility which
is the kitchen, the laundry, the medical … things like that, so that if and when the time comes for Garland County to expand that facility, it is going to be a much cheaper way to do it. All you’ll have to do is add additional housing space.”
According to the news release announcing his hiring in January, Chamberlain, formerly of Florida, holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Northwood University and a master’s degree in Public Administration from Barry University.
Chamberlain retired as a facility commander in 2011 with 26 years of experience in the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. He is a certified jail manager by the American Jail Association and a Florida- certified criminal justice instructor with approximately 10 years of academy and advanced training instruction experience.
Garland County Judge Rick Davis said earlier this week at the Garland County Quorum Court’s monthly meeting that cold temperatures and winter weather in recent months had “been tough on our schedule” for planned jail construction, but he said he wasn’t sure of the extent that the schedule had been set back.
“They are about two weeks behind on mainly block work which they can’t do when it’s below freezing,” Chamberlain said.
“Hopefully, this latest warmup will help them get some catch up opportunity going. They are still working on it. It’s not like everything is to a standstill. They are still working on some structural steel and the roofing and things like that. It’s just you’ve got to get the block done before you get a lot of the other things done.”
Chamberlain said he hoped to have most of the staff for the new jail hired before the jail is opened up for solely employee training later this year, which would occur after construction is finished and before inmates begin being housed around the end of 2014.
“We’d like to have all of our command staff for all of our supervisory-management positions filled before we actually open that facility as well as a majority of the deputy staff because we are going to basically have to occupy two buildings for a while ( with) the operation of this ( current) facility and then training on the new facility which is going to be very important,” Chamberlain said.
“We are going from a Volkswagen to a Cadillac out there. A lot of it is you have a state of the art electronics in that place and you don’t have that nearly to that extent at this facility so it’s going to require some training and a break- in period.”