More beds are part of Miramar brig expansion - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

More beds are part of Miramar brig expansion

SAN DIEGO — A nearly $28 million expansion of Navy Consolidated Brig Miramar, Calif., will house more male pretrial detainees and prisoners, and create a separate housing unit and support facilities for women.

The state-of-the-art facility, expected to open next year, incorporates recycled materials and environmentally friendly features such as low-flow toilets, solar water heaters, more skylights and a parking lot made from recycled asphalt and concrete.

The project will add 100,000 square feet of space to the existing 200,000-square-foot brig, including 120 beds for men, a separate 80-bed unit for women, a new galley and two mess decks to feed 200 prisoners, two medical examination rooms and additional offices for correctional staff.

The new design, which incorporates ideas collected from prison consultants, designers, brig staff and prisoners, “will give us more flexibility and capability,” said Bill Bashore, the brig’s command evaluator.

The brig, inside Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, now accommodates up to 400 men and women; it has been the military’s only correctional facility for women since 2003. Once expanded, it will accommodate 600 prisoners.

The expansion is part of the consolidation of military correctional facilities under the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which also ordered the closure of the Marine Corps’ base brig at Camp Pendleton, Calif. The larger facility will absorb prisoners and staff from Pendleton, bringing along 79 Marines and adding 15 civilian workers once the base brig closes.

The Miramar brig, largely run by the Navy, will become Joint Regional Consolidated Facility-Southwest, one of five joint correctional sites.

The new female wing will house women in four separate groups, based on whether they are in a pretrial status, housed among the general population, in an incentive-level program or serving sentences longer than seven years. Women now live in a housing unit originally designed for men.

Bashore said the new women’s facility is designed with an eye to programs and services that approach treating and rehabilitating female prisoners differently from men. “It’s community-type based,” he said.

For example, a small kitchenette will help pregnant women better manage nutrition, and a small laundry room will allow the women to wash personal items instead of sending them to the brig’s central laundry.

The expansion adds 15,000 square feet to a facility that supports a wood shop, metal shop, laundry, graphic arts shop and other jobs done by prisoners, Bashore said. “We want to give them some kind of marketable skills, so when they leave they have the experience necessary to find gainful employment,” he said.