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In an effort to combat the decades-long jail overcrowding issue, the Hidalgo County Adult Detention Facility may be getting an expansion in the near future.

Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez and Sheriff J.E. “Eddie” Guerra confirmed earlier this week funds will be designated to the planning of additional pods for the county jail in Edinburg after the commissioners court approved of a $50 million certificate of obligation in a July meeting.

The initial design for the jail before its construction was completed in 2003 held 2,000 beds and would have cost the county $56.5 million.

However, commissioners court and former County Judge Eloy Pulido chose to build a smaller facility containing 1,232 beds with a price tag of about $42 million despite warnings from officials.

The choices made then had set up Hidalgo County for today’s overcrowding problems.

In efforts to address the prolonged issue, Hidalgo County sends inmates to neighboring county jails and leases a Willacy County jail operated by a private company.

“Today we have approximately, on any given day, 1,800 prisoners,” Cortez said. “Five hundred in Willacy County, 1,200 in Edinburg and we still have 100 going to other places.”

Those other places include Cameron, Brooks, Starr and Jim Hogg counties.

Cortez clarified that $30 million out of the $50 million loan approved by the commissioners court will be going into planning and designing an expansion for the jail, which would likely be two additional pods that include about 800 beds.

He added that it would take some time to get to constructing the expansion.

“It’s going to take four or five years to build some additional space,” Cortez said. “So, what we did is we started planning to see how we can add more space to the jail that we have.”

Once the county has the plans and the cost, Cortez says they’ll use part of the front balance for the construction so as to not borrow as much next time, say for an additional $20 million.

Additional space should help decrease costs. As of now, the logistics of transporting inmates from where they’re being held to where they need to be, such as court hearings, takes a costly toll.

Even so, Guerra expressed some concern regarding the number of beds estimated to be added to the jail.

“The growth rate of this county, if it continues, we’re going to need a lot more than 700 or 800 beds,” Guerra said. “Currently we know that our needs are not sufficient. It hasn’t been sufficient for 25 years.”

According to Guerra, calls for services from his department have been increasing alongside the population of the Rio Grande Valley for the past 10 years.

He added that they are looking to add more positions at the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office in order to place more deputies on the road and maintain a good response time.

“We need a staffing level where we continue to provide (residents) a great service,” Guerra said.

All of this to say that an expansion to the county jail may not suffice.

As for the remaining $20 million from the certificate of obligation, that will be for but not limited to infrastructure improvements, acquisition of lands and renovations, documents show.

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