When Scott County studied the issue of a new jail five years ago, most of the people on the project worked in the criminal-justice system and knew the problems of the jail and its annex intimately.
That turned out to be a problem.
Those people understood that there were problems beyond the number of beds available, such as the layout of the facilities, their physical conditions, and the dearth of space for booking, food storage and preparation, and activities. But those items didn't make it into the report or into the public consciousness. "I think that was kind of understood to be a given," said Gail Elias, a principal in the Colorado-based firm Voorhis Associates who worked with the county on its current study.
The review undertaken in the mid-'90s resulted in a proposal for a new 500-bed jail (which would have met projected need through 2010 as well as provided a revenue stream from housing out-of-county inmates), but a $48 million bond referendum to fund the project was rejected soundly by voters in 1998.
Part of the problem was that the county hadn't made its case well enough. That situation has been rectified by a new study of the jail problem, submitted to the Scott County Board of Supervisors late last month. The exhaustive report makes a strong argument for a new jail, both in terms of bed capacity and space needed for other functions.
But the report is merely the first step in a long process that will culminate with a new bond referendum, most likely in November 2004. And while it's guaranteed that the proposal that emerges from the next part of the study will be smaller in scope than the 500-bed jail put forward in 1998, it might not cost any less, and nagging questions from three years ago have yet to be answered.
The New Study
Some of the reasons for the failure of the 1998 referendum are clear. The public wasn't involved in the planning process and had no buy-in. Alternatives to incarceration recommended by a consultant hadn't yet been tried, and the plan didn't make any effort to utilize the current jail or annex to reduce the size of the new facility.
The county has largely addressed those issues with its current study, but other questions have not been addressed and will need to be answered in the coming months and years, as the county embarks on the second phase of its study:
· Is the facility the right size? The projected need of 425 beds in 2017 and 525 beds in 2025 is based on assumptions about the county's population and its incarceration rate. The county will need to make a stronger case that those assumptions are valid.
· Where will the facility be built? The 1998 referendum raised questions about the creation of a "jail culture" downtown because the new jail would have had nearly four times the bed capacity of the current downtown facility.
· What will a new jail cost?
· What does the county plan to do with excess bed capacity it would have with a proposed 425- and 525-bed facility? Some citizens in 1998 thought the county was building a larger facility than it needed so it could house inmates from other counties and create a new revenue stream.
The new report was written by Voorhis under the guidance of the Community Jail & Alternatives Advisory Committee (CJAAC), which was formed following the defeat of the 1998 referendum.
The goal with CJAAC was to bring together proponents of the project with opponents, and have them work together to arrive at a mutually agreeable solution.
While the first phase of CJAAC's study does recommend expanding to Scott County's jail capacity, the number of beds is lower than the county requested in 1998, and the consultant doesn't expect the need to reach that capacity until much later (2017 versus 2010).
The study further recommends planning to expand jail capacity to 525 to meet projected demand in 2025. The "core" of the jail (including such things as kitchen, booking, laundry, activity, and recreation facilities) should be able to handle 635 inmates. County leaders stress that those numbers could be achieved either with a new jail or a combination of new construction and renovation of the existing jail and its annex on Tremont Avenue. (The capacity of the current jail and annex is just more than 200 inmates.)
The study cost taxpayers $80,000, which bought little new information, but those involved in the study said the price was worth it, primarily because the new review had far greater community involvement. That will be particularly important when another bond issue is brought to voters.
The information "was analyzed by a much broader group," Elias said. With more than 30 people on CJAAC, several without any law-enforcement experience, the committee's work was in some respects more difficult. "It takes more time, but you get much richer ideas," Elias said. Judge John Nahra called the new report "a community-based effort."
The report asserts that:
· Scott County has been aggressive - especially over the past three years - in its efforts to reduce the number of people who need to be jailed, using various diversion programs and by expediting cases through the court system;
· although diversion efforts have been successful, they've accomplished about all they can in terms of reducing the number of people Scott County jails;
· it's likely that number of people Scott County needs to jail will begin to rise significantly in the coming years;
· jail capacity needs to be expanded to handle the number of prisoners; and
· both the jail and the jail annex are inadequate beyond the issue of capacity.
But those findings are built on certain assumptions, and those directly impact the recommended size of a new facility. For one thing, the study projects that population in Scott County will grow 15 percent (to more than 182,000 people) between 2000 and 2025.
Furthermore, the study assumes that Scott County's incarceration rate will grow by 4.25 prisoners per 100,000 people per year. That number is based on Illinois' incarceration-rate growth, which Scott County's rate has mirrored over the past decade. But, if Scott County's incarceration-rate growth more closely resembles Iowa's over the next few decades, bed-space needs in the county jail could be as low as approximately 360 in 2017 and 417 in 2025. And that's assuming the population growth projected in the report.
If both population and incarceration grow more slowly than estimated, a 425-bed county jail would be even more wasteful.
Can the Jail Be Re-Used?
County officials are giving lip service to the concept of using the current jail to supplement the capacity of a new building, reducing the amount of construction. In the second phase of the study, said former Scott County Administrator Glen Erickson (who is serving new Administrator Ray Wierson as an advisor through the end of the year), the county will be asking itself, "Are there existing beds that can go toward those 425 beds?"
But it's unlikely that would be cost-effective in terms of the current jail.
"It should be clear from this review that the primary reason why Scott County needs to build a new jail ... is because this facility is no longer functional and has reached a point in its life cycle when it must either be replaced or renovated to provide a more cost-effective facility," the report states.
The jail is particularly difficult case in terms of renovation. In the oldest parts of the facility - dating back more than 100 years - jail bars are actually part of the building-support structure. In other words, those sections must be used as cells or not used at all.
Captain Michael McGregor, who runs the jail, is blunt about the prospect of continuing to use the current facility to complement a new building. "You'd spend so much extra money," he said. "I think you have to look at operation costs."
For one thing, while the jail currently has a bed capacity of nearly 130, most spaces at the jail were designed for (and should be used for) much smaller numbers of prisoners - including the kitchen and booking areas. "Every function is three times what it [the jail] was designed for," McGregor said. In his 17 years with the sheriff's department, McGregor said, "most of these functions have been moved two or three times." Storage space is also at a premium.
With cots and mattresses stored in hallways, a medical area that's completely inaccessible to a person in a wheelchair, hallways that are used to search prisoners, and cells into which officers can see only with mirrors, the Scott County jail is a marvel of both efficiency and inefficiency. Everything is so tightly packed that it would be difficult to get more out of the space. Yet the density of activity and uses in the jail is such that the layout is completely illogical and wasteful. Spaces and functions have been adapted, shifted, and moved to accommodate short-term needs, and the result is a facility that needs to be completely gutted if it's to be re-used for anything else.
The sheriff's office has asked the county board to approve a $300,000 expansion of both the booking and kitchen facilities. But those expansions have costs beyond their price tags.
Pointing to an area with janitorial supplies, McGregor said, "We're going to lose this area for coolers." Added Sheriff Dennis Conard: "If we expand anything, something's got to go."
If the current jail isn't part of expansion plans, certainly the jail annex - with 80 beds -could be used in the short term. "Functionally it works better than the existing jail," the report states. "While in the long term, this structure has standards-compliance issues, it does suggest some potential for interim use - at least for minimum-security inmates."
If the county is unwilling to put a 425-bed facility before voters, certainly one possibility would be to - in the short run - build a jail with approximately 345 beds and continue to use the annex, which would probably need some renovations.
What Next?
The county plans to work with Voorhis on its Phase Two study (no contract amount has yet been established), and it is in this part of the review that the consultant will be developing recommendations for new and/or renovated facilities.
Voorhis "only began to scratch the surface" with the Phase One study, Erickson said. "In Phase Two, there will be a lot more analysis."
Part of Voorhis' Phase Two contract will be community relations, including giving the public the opportunity to provide input. "We might want to ask the public what they want much earlier," Elias said.
If that public-relations campaign starts next year, voters will have more than two years to study and understand the jail issue. County leaders think that will be crucial, especially because a county bond referendum requires 60-percent approval to pass.
New County Administrator Wierson said he also hopes recent referenda have made voters comfortable with the idea of large county bond issues.
"The county as a jurisdiction very rarely goes to the bond market," Wierson said. Because even larger expenses are planned for and come out of the normal county budget - including the current renovation of the county building - taxpayers aren't used to large bond issues, he said. "There's some sticker shock," he noted.
But because of the 1998 referendum and the October vote for a $5 million county contribution to Davenport's River Renaissance package, he added "people will be a little more acclimated to what these costs are."
It could work the other way, too. Wierson suggested that a smaller facility might not translate into a littler price tag, and voters might question why something smaller needs to cost more. Construction costs rise, and a bond referendum will anticipate those increases. "It's not the cost in 2004, but in '05, '06, and '07," he said.
Another key for passage of a bond referendum is convincing voters that building a new facility is more cost-effective than using the current jail and annex and shipping some prisoners to other counties. While the current system is cramped, inefficient, and staff-intensive, the buildings are structurally sound.
And because of the state-imposed prisoner cap, the only jail function that will experience increased stress is booking; even when prisoners are housed out-of-county, they must initially pass through Scott County booking.
Housing prisoners out-of-county at this point is not terribly expensive, compared to the cost of re-paying tens of millions in construction bonds. In fiscal year 2000-1, the county paid $176,000 to house inmates out-of-county. (The county had budgeted $942,000, and the fact that it needed to spend only a fraction of that amount is a testament to the effectiveness of new diversion programs.) More than five months into fiscal year 2001-2, the county had paid $39,000 for inmate housing outside of Scott County, although that doesn't include payments for inmates who were housed out-of-county in November and December. There are also indirect costs, such as the time it takes sheriff staff to transport prisoners.
Another indirect cost is the waste and inefficiency of the current facilities. For example, "We can't get any good deals on food," McGregor said. "We don't have any place to put it." Maintenance costs have also increased over time, and the current jail is more staff-intensive than a new facility would be.
County officials will have to convince voters that a new facility is needed; that it's the right size; and that inefficiency and out-of-county housing would cost more than building a new facility.
And even with a new study in-hand with more community involvement, that might be a tough sell.
Those people understood that there were problems beyond the number of beds available, such as the layout of the facilities, their physical conditions, and the dearth of space for booking, food storage and preparation, and activities. But those items didn't make it into the report or into the public consciousness. "I think that was kind of understood to be a given," said Gail Elias, a principal in the Colorado-based firm Voorhis Associates who worked with the county on its current study.
The review undertaken in the mid-'90s resulted in a proposal for a new 500-bed jail (which would have met projected need through 2010 as well as provided a revenue stream from housing out-of-county inmates), but a $48 million bond referendum to fund the project was rejected soundly by voters in 1998.
Part of the problem was that the county hadn't made its case well enough. That situation has been rectified by a new study of the jail problem, submitted to the Scott County Board of Supervisors late last month. The exhaustive report makes a strong argument for a new jail, both in terms of bed capacity and space needed for other functions.
But the report is merely the first step in a long process that will culminate with a new bond referendum, most likely in November 2004. And while it's guaranteed that the proposal that emerges from the next part of the study will be smaller in scope than the 500-bed jail put forward in 1998, it might not cost any less, and nagging questions from three years ago have yet to be answered.
The New Study
Some of the reasons for the failure of the 1998 referendum are clear. The public wasn't involved in the planning process and had no buy-in. Alternatives to incarceration recommended by a consultant hadn't yet been tried, and the plan didn't make any effort to utilize the current jail or annex to reduce the size of the new facility.
The county has largely addressed those issues with its current study, but other questions have not been addressed and will need to be answered in the coming months and years, as the county embarks on the second phase of its study:
· Is the facility the right size? The projected need of 425 beds in 2017 and 525 beds in 2025 is based on assumptions about the county's population and its incarceration rate. The county will need to make a stronger case that those assumptions are valid.
· Where will the facility be built? The 1998 referendum raised questions about the creation of a "jail culture" downtown because the new jail would have had nearly four times the bed capacity of the current downtown facility.
· What will a new jail cost?
· What does the county plan to do with excess bed capacity it would have with a proposed 425- and 525-bed facility? Some citizens in 1998 thought the county was building a larger facility than it needed so it could house inmates from other counties and create a new revenue stream.
The new report was written by Voorhis under the guidance of the Community Jail & Alternatives Advisory Committee (CJAAC), which was formed following the defeat of the 1998 referendum.
The goal with CJAAC was to bring together proponents of the project with opponents, and have them work together to arrive at a mutually agreeable solution.
While the first phase of CJAAC's study does recommend expanding to Scott County's jail capacity, the number of beds is lower than the county requested in 1998, and the consultant doesn't expect the need to reach that capacity until much later (2017 versus 2010).
The study further recommends planning to expand jail capacity to 525 to meet projected demand in 2025. The "core" of the jail (including such things as kitchen, booking, laundry, activity, and recreation facilities) should be able to handle 635 inmates. County leaders stress that those numbers could be achieved either with a new jail or a combination of new construction and renovation of the existing jail and its annex on Tremont Avenue. (The capacity of the current jail and annex is just more than 200 inmates.)
The study cost taxpayers $80,000, which bought little new information, but those involved in the study said the price was worth it, primarily because the new review had far greater community involvement. That will be particularly important when another bond issue is brought to voters.
The information "was analyzed by a much broader group," Elias said. With more than 30 people on CJAAC, several without any law-enforcement experience, the committee's work was in some respects more difficult. "It takes more time, but you get much richer ideas," Elias said. Judge John Nahra called the new report "a community-based effort."
The report asserts that:
· Scott County has been aggressive - especially over the past three years - in its efforts to reduce the number of people who need to be jailed, using various diversion programs and by expediting cases through the court system;
· although diversion efforts have been successful, they've accomplished about all they can in terms of reducing the number of people Scott County jails;
· it's likely that number of people Scott County needs to jail will begin to rise significantly in the coming years;
· jail capacity needs to be expanded to handle the number of prisoners; and
· both the jail and the jail annex are inadequate beyond the issue of capacity.
But those findings are built on certain assumptions, and those directly impact the recommended size of a new facility. For one thing, the study projects that population in Scott County will grow 15 percent (to more than 182,000 people) between 2000 and 2025.
Furthermore, the study assumes that Scott County's incarceration rate will grow by 4.25 prisoners per 100,000 people per year. That number is based on Illinois' incarceration-rate growth, which Scott County's rate has mirrored over the past decade. But, if Scott County's incarceration-rate growth more closely resembles Iowa's over the next few decades, bed-space needs in the county jail could be as low as approximately 360 in 2017 and 417 in 2025. And that's assuming the population growth projected in the report.
If both population and incarceration grow more slowly than estimated, a 425-bed county jail would be even more wasteful.
Can the Jail Be Re-Used?
County officials are giving lip service to the concept of using the current jail to supplement the capacity of a new building, reducing the amount of construction. In the second phase of the study, said former Scott County Administrator Glen Erickson (who is serving new Administrator Ray Wierson as an advisor through the end of the year), the county will be asking itself, "Are there existing beds that can go toward those 425 beds?"
But it's unlikely that would be cost-effective in terms of the current jail.
"It should be clear from this review that the primary reason why Scott County needs to build a new jail ... is because this facility is no longer functional and has reached a point in its life cycle when it must either be replaced or renovated to provide a more cost-effective facility," the report states.
The jail is particularly difficult case in terms of renovation. In the oldest parts of the facility - dating back more than 100 years - jail bars are actually part of the building-support structure. In other words, those sections must be used as cells or not used at all.
Captain Michael McGregor, who runs the jail, is blunt about the prospect of continuing to use the current facility to complement a new building. "You'd spend so much extra money," he said. "I think you have to look at operation costs."
For one thing, while the jail currently has a bed capacity of nearly 130, most spaces at the jail were designed for (and should be used for) much smaller numbers of prisoners - including the kitchen and booking areas. "Every function is three times what it [the jail] was designed for," McGregor said. In his 17 years with the sheriff's department, McGregor said, "most of these functions have been moved two or three times." Storage space is also at a premium.
With cots and mattresses stored in hallways, a medical area that's completely inaccessible to a person in a wheelchair, hallways that are used to search prisoners, and cells into which officers can see only with mirrors, the Scott County jail is a marvel of both efficiency and inefficiency. Everything is so tightly packed that it would be difficult to get more out of the space. Yet the density of activity and uses in the jail is such that the layout is completely illogical and wasteful. Spaces and functions have been adapted, shifted, and moved to accommodate short-term needs, and the result is a facility that needs to be completely gutted if it's to be re-used for anything else.
The sheriff's office has asked the county board to approve a $300,000 expansion of both the booking and kitchen facilities. But those expansions have costs beyond their price tags.
Pointing to an area with janitorial supplies, McGregor said, "We're going to lose this area for coolers." Added Sheriff Dennis Conard: "If we expand anything, something's got to go."
If the current jail isn't part of expansion plans, certainly the jail annex - with 80 beds -could be used in the short term. "Functionally it works better than the existing jail," the report states. "While in the long term, this structure has standards-compliance issues, it does suggest some potential for interim use - at least for minimum-security inmates."
If the county is unwilling to put a 425-bed facility before voters, certainly one possibility would be to - in the short run - build a jail with approximately 345 beds and continue to use the annex, which would probably need some renovations.
What Next?
The county plans to work with Voorhis on its Phase Two study (no contract amount has yet been established), and it is in this part of the review that the consultant will be developing recommendations for new and/or renovated facilities.
Voorhis "only began to scratch the surface" with the Phase One study, Erickson said. "In Phase Two, there will be a lot more analysis."
Part of Voorhis' Phase Two contract will be community relations, including giving the public the opportunity to provide input. "We might want to ask the public what they want much earlier," Elias said.
If that public-relations campaign starts next year, voters will have more than two years to study and understand the jail issue. County leaders think that will be crucial, especially because a county bond referendum requires 60-percent approval to pass.
New County Administrator Wierson said he also hopes recent referenda have made voters comfortable with the idea of large county bond issues.
"The county as a jurisdiction very rarely goes to the bond market," Wierson said. Because even larger expenses are planned for and come out of the normal county budget - including the current renovation of the county building - taxpayers aren't used to large bond issues, he said. "There's some sticker shock," he noted.
But because of the 1998 referendum and the October vote for a $5 million county contribution to Davenport's River Renaissance package, he added "people will be a little more acclimated to what these costs are."
It could work the other way, too. Wierson suggested that a smaller facility might not translate into a littler price tag, and voters might question why something smaller needs to cost more. Construction costs rise, and a bond referendum will anticipate those increases. "It's not the cost in 2004, but in '05, '06, and '07," he said.
Another key for passage of a bond referendum is convincing voters that building a new facility is more cost-effective than using the current jail and annex and shipping some prisoners to other counties. While the current system is cramped, inefficient, and staff-intensive, the buildings are structurally sound.
And because of the state-imposed prisoner cap, the only jail function that will experience increased stress is booking; even when prisoners are housed out-of-county, they must initially pass through Scott County booking.
Housing prisoners out-of-county at this point is not terribly expensive, compared to the cost of re-paying tens of millions in construction bonds. In fiscal year 2000-1, the county paid $176,000 to house inmates out-of-county. (The county had budgeted $942,000, and the fact that it needed to spend only a fraction of that amount is a testament to the effectiveness of new diversion programs.) More than five months into fiscal year 2001-2, the county had paid $39,000 for inmate housing outside of Scott County, although that doesn't include payments for inmates who were housed out-of-county in November and December. There are also indirect costs, such as the time it takes sheriff staff to transport prisoners.
Another indirect cost is the waste and inefficiency of the current facilities. For example, "We can't get any good deals on food," McGregor said. "We don't have any place to put it." Maintenance costs have also increased over time, and the current jail is more staff-intensive than a new facility would be.
County officials will have to convince voters that a new facility is needed; that it's the right size; and that inefficiency and out-of-county housing would cost more than building a new facility.
And even with a new study in-hand with more community involvement, that might be a tough sell.
