Detention facility to house both sexes

Things might be looking up for the guys detained at Casa Grande Transitional Housing Facility in the southwest valley.

On Monday, 50 female inmates will move into the all- male facility because of jail overcrowding issues, officials said Thursday.

“We are now mixing sexes,” said Suzanne Pardee, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections. “That is something we normally do not do.”

The women being moved to the facility meet the criteria, if not the anatomy, of the men detained there.

In other words, the women have been convicted of minor nonviolent offenses and have fewer than 120 days until release or parole, Pardee said.

To be housed at Casa Grande, the women cannot be sex offenders or have had any recent major disciplinary problems.

But socializing with the opposite sex might not be that easy for the inmates.

The rules apparently are only slightly more strict than at a Roman Catholic high school dance.

The women will have separate meal times than the men, and they will not be living on the same floor of the facility, Pardee said.

“They will not be mingling in the facility,” she said, adding there will be close visual supervision of the inmates. “This is going to be a challenge because we are normally set up for the men only.”

The 400-bed, $23 million facility at 3955 W. Russell Road, near Valley View Boulevard and only a mile from Mandalay Bay, first opened its doors in January 2006. From the outside, the facility looks like an apartment complex — with a lot of fences.

Howard Skolnik, director of the Department of Corrections, said in a statement: “The decision to house women in a minimum security facility neither designed nor staffed for a coeducational population has been made due to the critical overcrowding, particularly in our female population.”

The women come from the Jean Conservation Camp at the Southern Correctional Center in Jean.

They are considered “community trustees” and are eligible to work outside the facility, Pardee said.

Many will be given bus passes and are allowed to leave the facility unsupervised to go to their jobs as part of a work release program.

“We are trying to transition them into the community, so when they are released they have jobs and so they are less likely to come back,” Pardee said.

When the women are not at an approved location, they must be confined under the supervision of correctional officers.

This situation will most likely continue until January, when new facilities are expected to be completed.