- Ada County Detention Center unveils a new Recreation area for residents in the facility.
- The old recreation area was dark, had a lot of fencing, and a low basketball hoop. Now the space is more open, has higher ceilings, more light and fan installations.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
More space, more light, and more to do. I'm your neighborhood reporter Jessica Davis with more on the new recreation area for residents in the Ada County Juvenile Detention Center.
Residents at the Ada County Juvenile Detention Center have a new space to hang out, exercise, and play some sports.
"We were trying to bring natural light into the building, hard to do skylights in an older building and when the ARPA became available, we thought maybe we should do something with it,” says Alison Tate.
Alison Tate is the director of the detention center.
She describes the center: "We do have fans up high; you can feel how cool it is with this nice barrel roof.”
She says the old rec area was dark, and had a lot of fencing, and a low basketball hoop. Now the space is more open, has higher ceilings, more light, and fan installations.
"Our clinicians can meet with kids out here, Probation Officers, if they're coming to meet a kid they can meet outside and it just feels so much different than really our sales inside and very small rooms so kids and staff we're so pleased to have this amenity,” says Tate.
The center currently houses fewer than 15 juveniles, staff say from 2020 to now they've seen a huge decrease in residents.
Wendy Seagraves is the clinical supervisor for Ada County Juvenile Services and says getting outside and having this brighter and bigger space can better behaviors and responses, and make the residents more comfortable.
She says, “This is so much nicer and we can sit at tables which is nice actual full court where you can play basketball and move around we do yoga sometimes to help trauma-informed yoga and so we can bring the mats out here and do yoga such a better space for it where it's actually going to beneficial for them.”
Staff at the Detention Center expressed special thanks to the Ada County Commissioners who helped make these upgrades possible.
