LANSING- With two state prisons and a boot camp closing, some counties are considering building new jail facilities to relieve overcrowding and accommodate prisoners from the closed state facilities.

So far, Allegan and Midland counties have decided on sites.

Allegan County plans to build a 400-bed facility in the Dumont Lake Complex, where several other local government services are located, such as the community mental health department, central dispatch for corrections and human services.

Sheriff Blaine Koops said the new jail would replace the downtown facility in Allegan, which is highly overcrowded and has safety problems.

“The jail was built in 1962 to hold 62 inmates,” Koops said. It currently houses 173 inmates.

Many areas of the jail, including the apartment within the building where a former sheriff and his family lived, and a section where detectives and state corrections officers conducted business, were converted into dormitories for the prisoners, Koops said.

“The new jail would eliminate overcrowding,” he said, and fit modern-day criteria of corrections facility standards.

Funding for the jail is under negotiation.

Midland County voters approved building a $25 million, 250-bed structure in the city of Midland last November. It would replace the existing jail in the downtown area.

County Commissioner Rose Marie McQuaid said that boarding prisoners out to other counties costs more than building a facility. And she said, “We want to rehabilitate. It would make it easier for families to visit” if inmates stay close to their homes.

The proposed jail is being funded from the county’s operational budget. Midland County also received $800,000 in advance from the Michigan Department of Corrections.

Mason County Sheriff Laude Hartrum said there is no possibility of more funding for his jail operations from the Corrections Department.

A 1997 jail millage, used for the expansion, construction and operations of the facility, is almost gone.

“The county can’t afford staff. We need to renew the millage for day-to-day operations,” Hartrum said.

An extension of the millage for another 10 years will be on the 2008 ballot.

In 2007, the MDOC closed Camp Manistique in Schoolcraft County, the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson and Riverside Correctional Facility in Ionia to help the state budget.

Since 2001, Western Wayne Correctional Facility in Plymouth, Huron Valley Center— a psychiatric hospital in Ypsilanti— Camp Pellston in Emmet County, Michigan Reformatory in Ionia and State Prison of Southern Michigan in Jackson also have been closed.