Comparison of Our City & County Jails

Plus: Nisqually Jail Rates

Photo of the "New Pierce County Jail" for misdemeanor inmates, built 2003 with 1,008 beds, most sitting empty since then — Photo from Pierce County website of the New Pierce County Jail, with title overlain showing 202 incarcerated in this 1,008 bed facility on October 25, 2023 during our 3 week campaign to stop the building of a Puyallup Jail due to huge excess capacity ever since the New County Jail was built in 2003, with much more affordable daily rates than what it costs to run city jails, all of which have closed … except in Puyallup which spends over $2 million/year while no other city, including Tacoma at 5 times our population, comes anywhere close to that expenditure.

We’re sure you’ll agree that paying to run the Puyallup City Jail at over $2+ million per year ($50 per capita in a city of 40,000) or potentially $3 million per year ($75 per capita) if we renovate the jail, to house a couple dozen misdemeanor inmates (click “current” then “search” with nothing in fields), is more than wasteful in comparison to using our Pierce County Jail or Nisqually Jail for a few hundred thousand dollars per year like Lakewood (click and search jail services) and other regional cities and towns do. Even the City of Tacoma spent only $1.2 million (just $5 per capita in a city of 220,000) for all its jail services in 2022 (Source: Office of Budget and Management) by contracting with the Pierce County and Nisqually jails. Can you imagine the enhanced investigations and crime prevention we could achieve in Puyallup with a million extra dollars available for our police department? That could even finance a new police station without raising our taxes or taking away from other essential city needs.

See below for Nisqually

Our Puyallup City Jail

Capacity: 51 Beds in jail built in the 1960s, renovated in the 1990s, with roof fixes and other maintenance in the 2020s.

Current Beds Filled: 19 on October 15th (click “current” then “search” with nothing in fields) when we wrote this page.

Current Cost Per Inmate: Puyallup lumps the jail into the police budget, but the chief says it’s been about $2.1 million per year, so if we divide $2.1 million by 365 days, that’s $5,753/night, and if we have an average of 28 Puyallup inmates/night like in 2022, that’s $205/night per inmate plus 100% liability insurance and losses.

Cost Per Inmate if New Jail Built: City Council says $31 million of the proposed Public Safety Building is for a new jail which takes up half the square footage of the project, and $9 million of the project is for groundbreaking. So half of groundbreaking, $4.5 million, plus $31 million to complete the jail, equals $35.5 million for the jail, although with current exorbitant costs of public building contracts and high interest rates, that will be much higher. The bond is drawn out over 30 years, that’s a fixed cost of about $1.1 million/year. The new jail is bigger than the current jail, and costs to run it will be higher than our current $2.1+ million, especially with the new medical beds (unnecessary since our new Pierce County Jail already has a medical wing), so Puyallup Voters for Integrity estimates it will cost about $4 million/year to build and run the new jail, plus liability insurance and losses. Dividing $4 million by 365 days equals $10,959/night for the jail. Dividing that by 28 inmates/night equals $391/night per inmate. If we got up to an average of 50 inmates in a new 58 bed jail, that would equal $219/night per inmate. Compare that to using our Pierce County Jail or the Nisqually Jail….

Our Pierce County Jail

Capacity: 1,008 Beds in New Misdemeanor Jail built in 2003 with medical wing and natural light, plus 709 Beds in Main Felony Jail built in 1985, for a total of 1,717 Beds.

Current Beds Filled: 202 Beds in New Jail, and 537 Beds in Main Jail, for a total of 739 Beds filled on October 15th (click link and copy to spreadsheet, then sort on jail) so 978 empty beds on the day we wrote this page.

Current Cost Per Inmate: Lakewood Finance Department reports that it currently pays Pierce County a $66.08 booking fee, plus $98.08 per night inmate fee, so for an average misdemeanor stay of 6 days, that’s about $109/night per inmate. When medical/mental health beds are needed, they pay $272/night; and when they need county transport service, they pay $146 escort fee. Their total expenditures for all jail related services in 2022 were just about $500,000 and they are budgeting $600,000 for next year. In a city of 63,000 people located the same distance from our county jail as Puyallup, that’s about $8 per capita.

Nisqually Jail

Capacity: 288 Beds, built in 2014 with natural lighting, outdoor recreation yard, and rehab space.

Current Beds Filled: Currently researching, but several area cities contract to place inmates here, including Tacoma, Lakewood, Olympia, and more.

Current Cost Per Inmate: Lakewood Finance Department reports that it currently pays Nisqually a $20 booking fee, plus $136.50 per night so for an average misdemeanor stay of 6 days, that’s about $140/night per inmate.

Please consider a donation of any amount, and invite your friends to like our Facebook page. Sponsored by Puyallup Voters for Integrity, PO Box 42, Puyallup WA 98371. No candidate or party contributes to, authorizes or controls this Political Action Committee which is registered at the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission. 2025 campaign season contributors over the $100 threshold so far include Chris Chisholm, PV4I Treasurer. When facts are presented, we want them to be accurate. If you find any errors, please email us with original-source evidence for correction.