East Mesa Reentry Facility

Located in the southern part of San Diego, the East Mesa Reentry Facility (EMRF) is situated in the foothills of Otay Mesa, overlooking the Mexican border. Originally a juvenile facility, it was reclassified in 2013 as a reentry facility to introduce new work and behavioral therapy programs to male inmates who are incarcerated.

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department quickly realized they needed more room because of the reclassification. An expansion, completed in June 2014, opened up 400 additional beds, providing room for approximately 1,000 inmates to take educational courses and life skills classes. Due to the working nature of the facility, the EMRF is able to provide more rehabilitative programs than other jails of its size—in addition to earning a GED, inmates are able to earn certifications in many trades, such as construction, computer graphics, and printing press operation.

During the expansion, it was clear that the EMRF not only had to plan for current needs, but they also had to have an eye on the future. One of the plans was to have eligible split-sentence offenders (a sentence that is split into two parts—incarceration and probation) finish their time at the EMRF instead of at a San Diego jail, which meant the population of the facility was always going to be increasing.

“The facility knew they had to maximize the space they had,” says Linda Suarez, Storage Consultant for Spacesaver Intermountain. “They already knew they were getting cramped.” One of the biggest issues the facility knew they had to deal with was the storage of inmate property bags.

Inmate property bags at EMRF had always been a challenge—but after the expansion, it was clear the space designated for them was woefully inadequate. The inmate property storage system they used—hanging garment bags—seemed to still be doing the trick, but they needed to replicate the system so that it was enough to hold the property of 1,000 residents at any given time.

Working with the inmate property storage department at EMRF, Spacesaver designed three 25’ long two-tier 4-post metal shelves, each tier with metal rods at the top that run parallel to the shelf. Engineered this way, each tier was able to provide twice the storage space of the previous solution. Each of the shelves were set up similar to library bookcases to provide enough clearance so staff members could walk in between the shelves and retrieve the necessary items without having be cramped or strain on a ladder.

To prepare for the expansion caused by the reentry facility designation, San Diego County Sherriff’s Department added over 100 employees. However, the personnel increase was difficult to manage when many parts of the EMRF were already lacking space.

One of the areas hurting the most were the individual locker rooms for the male and female staff members. Adding additional lockers to the rooms was going to be hard enough—but East Mesa also wanted to increase the width of the lockers from 12” to 18”, so that employees could store all of their necessary gear. And, it was also important that personnel have a place to sit while they were in the locker rooms.

The engineers at Spacesaver came to a conclusion—if there was a way for the locker benches to retract into the lockers—similar to a cutting board that retracts into a counter of  a kitchen—it would cut down on the space needed in the footprint for places to sit, and the facility would still be able to get the required number of enlarged lockers in the same locker room footprint.