By Beth LeBlanc
The Detroit News
LANSING, Mich. — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a bill that authorizes the state of Michigan to transfer the Detroit Detention Center to the city.
Under the plan described to lawmakers in committee hearings over the past several weeks, Detroit would take possession of the building by Aug. 1 for as little as $1.
The detention center, which has been under state control since 2013, holds Detroit arrestees from the time of their arrest to the point of their arraignment, usually a maximum of 72 hours.
“This is a unique situation for Detroit,” state Rep. Alabas Farhat, D- Dearborn, told lawmakers last month in a committee hearing on the bill. “Many cities are able to simply hold inmates themselves at their police departments and local holding cells. In the city of Detroit, obviously being a larger community, larger city, this is a space where they utilize this as well.”
John Roach, a spokesman for Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, said details are still being worked out regarding when the sale will be finalized. He expects the cost to the city to be “nominal"; the legislation authorizes the state to sell the property to the city for $1.
Whitmer said Friday, the day she signed the bill, that the sale “will help save taxpayers money for allowing the sale of the DDC to the city of Detroit .”
“This sale will also support government efficiency by ensuring resources are put back in local governments,” Whitmer said in the statement.
Since 2014, the MDOC has operated the Detroit Detention Center, the former Mound Correctional Facility on Mound Road at East Davison Street, to help the police department end 11 years of federal oversight in 2014. The city entered into three consent decrees in 2003 to settle a civil rights lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice that alleged DPD had a systemic practice of “subjecting individuals to … excessive force, false arrests, illegal detentions and unconstitutional conditions of confinement.”
The state’s involvement was governed under a non-binding interagency agreement that stipulates the state must give 90 days’ notice to exit the deal. Detroit Police officials said they were told of the change last year, with the state making the decision in October. The state and city’s contract ends July 31.
“We think it’s time to move this operation to the city fully,” Kyle Kaminski, legislative liaison for the Michigan Department of Corrections, told lawmakers last month. “They have a very solid plan for taking it over. It will allow us to redeploy our staffing resources and our energy back into our core operations around the state.”
The detention center can house about 200 inmates at a time — 150 men and 50 women — and averages about 1,500 occupants a month, Detroit’s Assistant Police Chief JD Hayes told lawmakers.
The department has been preparing to transition to full ownership of the detention center for some time, Hayes said, and will have to make a few dozen more hires to replace the roughly 75 MDOC employees who currently work there.
“We began a training schedule in which members of the Detroit police department are shadowing MDOC personnel throughout the daily operations of the current detention center,” Hayes said.
The contract between the state and city to run the facility began at about $8.1 million in the first year of the contract and currently stands at about $11.4 million, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency .
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