San Diego
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The City Council agreed Monday to build a 200-bed jail that will open in April on Otay Mesa, on land owned by San Diego County.
The jail, which will house people who have been arrested but not yet arraigned on misdemeanor charges, will be designed, built and operated by the Wackenhut Corp., a Coral Gables, Fla.-based company that operates jails.
“We hope that the facility will be open by April 3,” Assistant City Manager Jack McGrory said Monday. It was scheduled to open by December, but changes in the city’s memorandum of understanding with the county forced the delay.
That memorandum protects the facility from any court orders asking for it to be used for other purposes, McGrory said. That prohibition would keep the county’s judges from seizing the jail and using it to solve the county’s growing jail-space crisis.
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