Future of Johnson County jail, sheriff’s office in question

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors had a lengthy work session last week regarding the future of the Johnson County sheriff’s office and jail. The jail, located at 511 S. Capitol St. in Iowa City, is in dire need of updating, according to Johnson County sheriff Brad Kunkel. He suggested the fiscally responsible course of action is to invest in a new facility, rather than continuing to spend money on housing overflow inmates outside the county. “We have to have an appropriate place to keep (inmates) and house them and provide them while they're there,” he said at the board’s July 10 meeting. “And at the same time, the sheriff's office and everything else that we do – that we're required to do by law – and the public that we serve is also in that same building, which means that the rest of those people are in the same situation: a building that doesn't meet the needs of today.” The 26,520-square-foot facility was built in 1981 to accommodate 46 inmates; today, the same square footage holds more than 90 beds. The county hired engineering firm Shive-Hattery to conduct a space needs assessment on the facility, which held a preliminary discussion on its findings at the board’s May 29 work session. Shive-Hattery representatives Michael Lewis, principal and justice subject matter expert, and Mark Allen, principal and project manager, estimate it will cost $80 million to revamp the facility. There were multiple areas of non-compliance discovered in the building during the assessment, including issues with structural integrity and handicap accessibility. The facility operates above capacity and currently outsources to other jails, Shive-Hattery said at the May meeting. “The most expensive cost over the life of a facility is the staffing cost,” said Mr. Lewis. “It’s not the capital construction cost. Over the life of the facility, it is how many staff (are) need(ed) to operate in the facility for it to work.” The firm proposed a facility that will accommodate 140 beds, which puts the square footage at 122,000 and the total cost an estimated $80 million. “I don’t know where you get to 140 beds,” board supervisor Mx. Fixmer-Oraiz said to Shive-Hattery, when the firm presented its final report to the Board of Supervisors at the July 10 work session, calling the data in the report “obscure.” The jail saw a 40% decrease in inmates from 2015 to present, according to Shive-Hattery’s report; in 2011, the facility housed 160 people, which was an estimated 48% decrease, Mx. Fixmer-Oraiz noted, and questioned why the plans call for more beds when incarceration rates are going down. “The data is not necessarily here to back up the 140 beds,” they reiterated, and expressed the desire to see additional input from more stakeholders. Sheriff Kunkel pointed out that the proposed space accounts for the sheriff’s office, as well as the jail. “We can't get bogged down or be misleading when we say we're talking about $80 million for a jail. That's not true,” he told the supervisors. “What we're talking about is the concept we have in front of us, the space to meet the needs of the 100 employees that we have, and the public that we serve.” Shive-Hattery agreed to revise the needs assessment report based on suggestions from the supervisors, who will revisit the topic at their Aug. 28 meeting.