By Steven Verburg
The Wisconsin State Journal
MADISON, Wisc. — Dane County officials are considering building a jail that could become the largest public works project in county history, while saving millions of tax dollars in annual operating expenses and providing better care and guidance for mentally ill inmates.
“We’ll have to make sure it will pay off,” County Executive Joe Parisi said. “(But) this would better reflect the desires and values of our community.”
With a price tag that could exceed $85 million, the lockup would centralize operations that now are strung inefficiently through three buildings. And it would replace 1954-vintage cell blocks with modern dormitory designs that are considered safer and potentially less costly to operate.
But with county finances tight, a construction proposal may face strong skepticism from County Board members.
Nationally, direct-supervision dormitory designs have been in use for decades — including in newer sections of the Dane County Jail — but it’s difficult to get an accurate picture of how widespread they are. A rough count by the National Institute of Corrections indicated the number rose from about 200 jails and prisons in 1999 to 349 in 2006.
Parisi said more efficient jail operations would free up guards, medical staff and others for efforts that should reduce repeat offenses by prisoners after they’ve served their sentences.
With fewer employees needed to serve multiple sites and outdated cell blocks, a new jail could deliver stronger training and guidance programs for all inmates — coupled with more humane and helpful conditions for the growing majority of inmates who are mentally ill, addicted or otherwise disabled — improving the chances that inmates won’t reoffend, he said.
The consulting firm Mead & Hunt is expected to deliver a report on options and costs by December. Parisi said he plans to earmark $8 million of the roughly $40 million capital budget he unveils Tuesday for planning and land acquisition in 2014, so the jail could be built within three to five years.
Depending on design decisions, construction costs would vary widely, but they could well exceed the $44 million Dane County Courthouse, and the $68 million Dane County Regional Airport terminal expansion, both completed in 2006, officials said.
For several years, jail costs and crowding have been reduced by putting more non-violent inmates on electronic monitoring and by speeding up court appearances. At the same time, crime rates were falling.
But all of the jail’s problems haven’t disappeared. In 2011, a state Department of Corrections inspector cited the jail because inmates on suicide watch weren’t always being checked every 15 minutes. A 2012 inspection expressed “concern” about inconsistencies in special watch checks. For the fourth straight year, the DOC said it was concerned about supervision of guards making the checks. For the fifth straight year, the DOC cited concerns that general inmates weren’t being checked frequently enough.
Jail Security Services Capt. Richelle Anhalt said some of the concerns stemmed from limitations in record-keeping software, but others were instances of jail deputies becoming busy with inmate emergencies.
Months ago, the County Board approved a consulting contract to examine ways to prevent inmate suicides and provide better mental health and medical care. Officials asked the consultants to expand their scope, and the idea of a new jail emerged.
Dane County Board Chairman John Hendrick said cutting jail costs, providing better care and reducing recidivism were good goals, but he would need to be persuaded that a massive jail construction project was the best way.
Hendrick said he questioned whether a new jail should be a higher priority than items such as postponed maintenance at the Alliant Energy Center and energy efficiency efforts that would save money. Even the initial $8 million may be unneeded in 2014, he said.
“I would have very grave concerns about making a commitment in the 2014 budget to put something like that on the tax levy,” Hendrick said.
Veteran board member Dave Wiganowsky said he believes jail should be a punishment, but he’s open to creating better environments for medically and mentally ill inmates.
“It could be good investment for the future,” Wiganowsky said. “Especially right now. With the wars that have been going on, we have a lot of veterans coming home.”
Options for where to build
Between 1954 and 1994, jail facilities were built for 957 inmates in three buildings — Downtown in the City-County Building and the Public Safety Building, and on Rimrock Road in the Ferris Huber Center.
The expense of cooking food, doing laundry and providing health care to inmates would decrease with a new jail if workers didn’t need to travel to all three buildings to do their jobs, Parisi said.
He and others said it’s too early to have more than rough cost and savings estimates.
Sheriff’s office security operations are budgeted at more than $33.2 million this year, including a $4.4 million contract for medical services.
Whether jails realize savings from moving to direct-supervision dormitories depends largely on how staff members are hired, trained and managed, said Virginia Hutchinson, recently retired National Institute of Corrections jails division chief.
But after inmates learn to follow the rules of direct supervision dormitories, a jail can see less conflict and fewer demands on staff, she said.
“You can stop fighting with the inmates and start offering more constructive activities for them,” Hutchinson said.
Direct-supervision dorm designs were developed by the institute in the early 1980s and have grown in popularity ever since, Hutchinson said. The institute is a federal agency that provides technical support to jails and prisons.
Fewer bars, closer supervision
A new Dane County Jail could be constructed by adding floors to the Public Safety Building, or by building in an
adjacent parking lot or on some other site, said Josh Wescott, Parisi’s chief of staff. Cost factors in the December consultant’s report will guide the decision, Wescott said.
Sheriff Dave Mahoney said he wanted a new jail to create more opportunities for inmate work and education, along with stronger treatment programs, to prevent recidivism.
Currently, men and women with mental illnesses are often segregated to prevent conflicts with general inmates. Isolated in individual metal and concrete cells, their symptoms can worsen quickly, Mahoney said. A new jail could provide more therapeutic group cells that don’t leave a depressed or delusional inmate alone, and allow better supervision by guards and medical staff, he said.
Eighty percent of the county’s inmates have mental health or addiction problems that, untreated, make it hard for them to function on the outside after release, so they end up arrested again, Mahoney said.
“We’re trying to break that revolving-door cycle,” Mahoney said.
If a jail is built, it will likely be designed with dormitory living spaces that hold 50 or more inmates who are supervised by a single guard.
The “direct supervision” design allows the county jail deputies to detect and
interrupt conflicts between prisoners before fights erupt or one inmate preys on another, said Lt. Gordon Bahler, a jail administrator.
The Public Safety Building has eight such dorms for minimum- and medium-security inmates, although their layouts could be improved to give jail deputies better sight lines, Bahler said.
An inmate will injure a guard in one of the dorms from time to time, but usually the rest of the inmates help stop or prevent such attacks, Bahler said.
Since Jan. 1, 2011, five deputies have been injured in dorm areas, compared with 11 around the old cell blocks in the City-County Building, said Anhalt, the jail captain.
Deputies patrol halls that run between the old cell blocks at least hourly. They can see into cell block common areas but can’t easily view the cells on each side. Injuries happen when a problem has spun out of control and guards need to force an inmate out of a cell, Anhalt said.
When people first hear how the dorms work, they sometimes wonder how one deputy can keep order, Mahoney said.
“The deputies rely on the inmates for safety. The inmates rely on the deputies for their environment and privileges,” Mahoney said.
In dorm settings, deputies respond to minor infractions and disobedience by assigning chores such as cleaning toilets. The dormitories include a few cells where inmates are locked down for worse offenses. The deputies in the dorms are unarmed, but backup is never far away, Bahler said.
Anhalt said the direct-supervision system has worked well on a limited basis in the Public Safety Building.
“You expect normal adult behavior, and that’s what you get,” Anhalt said. “You give respect, and you get that back.”