Construction at the county jail is on budget — mostly — and on schedule, with several key parts of the long-needed expansion already in use.
The $23.1 million project that’s been years in the making includes adding 264 beds in a new wing of the jail, pull-in bays for arresting officers, a streamlined intake area, an expanded medical center and a professional-grade virtual courtroom.
The expansion’s main feature is a new building to the west of the existing jail, connected by a walkway. The addition will include about 74 new cells on two floors. Those cells will be designed to hold two, four or six inmates, depending on size.
The expansion also features a central command center, a raised tower in the middle of all the cells so jail workers can monitor and see all the inmates at all times.
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The contractor, Scottsburg-based C.H. Garmong and Son, Inc., has moved construction along at a good pace. The new medical center and video courtroom are open, and walls are going up around the new cells to seal them from the elements this winter, sheriff Duane Burgess said.
On-budget changes
No project this size goes off without a hitch. In the midst of construction, several unexpected expenses and a redesign of the intake area added nearly $200,000 to the total cost. The project is still on budget though, with $300,000 left in the contingency fund, said Wes Harrison, jail project manager.
The additional expenses are routine and somewhat expected, given a project of this scope, said Johnson County Commissioner Kevin Walls, who is overseeing the project on the board’s behalf.
“You never go into a project expecting it to cost exactly what is bid,” Walls said. “We always have hiccups in a construction project.”
It is up to the Johnson County Board of Commissioners whether additional expenses are approved. The three-member board reviews every contract change order, which include the cost and details of the change, during public meetings.
The most recent change order was for $47,000, which will cover the cost difference between the previous layout of the intake area and a more streamlined plan that was developed after the design was approved, Burgess said.
All of the changes are made with future growth in mind. Getting the intake area right is important because it needs to be large enough to accommodate the jail’s current inmate intake volume while planning for that to grow with the county’s population, Burgess said. The intake area also needs to have an efficient workflow that will not cause headaches for employees, he said.
“We have to make sure this is right because it is going to be impacting the people who work there for years to come,” Burgess said.
The jail’s intake area has been a problem for some time. It is too small for the jail’s volume of arrests and transfers from other facilities, he said.
At times, when the intake volume is especially high, inmates and staff have to wait outside in a transport van until they can be processed, Burgess said.
Now that the change order is approved, the new intake area is under construction, and walls are going up. This winter, interior work such as electrical and plumbing, will begin in the new wing, he said.
Timely moves
For years, county officials and multiple sheriffs grappled with how to address chronic overcrowding at the jail, built in 1977. As the population rose, so did crime. The county had to renovate and restructure parts of it in response to a 1997 federal lawsuit.
After the lawsuit, the jail was remodeled and a new wing was added that raised the jail’s capacity to 299 from 104 in 2002. But the population swelled further.
More beds were added at the jail in 2012 after an inspector with the Indiana Department of Correction found room for 23 more bunks at the request of Burgess, who was jail commander at the time, and then-sheriff Doug Cox.
Still, it wasn’t enough. At times, the jail had dozens more inmates than it could accommodate, and eventually the state ordered the county to fix the ongoing overcrowding issue.
Now that the long-needed expansion has come to fruition, there’s no time to waste. As parts of the project are completed, jail staff move in. That has been the case with the new pull-in bays, also known as a sally port, medical center and video courtroom.
Prioritizing the medical center and video courtroom came in handy in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The new medical center allows for 24/7 medical care via an onsite nurse, whereas before a nurse was only available for 12 hours a day, Burgess said.
The video courtroom, a dedicated space where inmates can appear virtually in court from the jail, has made virtual hearings and sentencings a breeze at a time when transports are being limited. Before, there was a rudimentary space for virtual court, but this one has higher quality technology with a professional broadcast production set up, he said.
Not only does the video courtroom allow inmates to appear in court more safely, but it is also likely to save the county money in the long-run, Walls said. It will allow the county to cut out non-essential transfers to and from court long after the pandemic, freeing up employees and trimming transport vehicle costs, he said.
“There’s the transportation costs. We’ve also had people step off a curb and break an ankle and they sue. I could go on and on (about the benefits),” Walls said.
Meeting needs
As the project progresses, Burgess is looking at staffing needs to operate a much larger jail and the higher number of inmates who will someday occupy it.
With construction expected to wrap up next fall, the Johnson County Council recently approved 10 new correctional officers for next year; five will be hired in January, and five more in June. So, by the time the new wing opens entirely, the five January hires will be fully trained and ready to serve, Burgess said.
Burgess plans to take hiring slow and request officers as needed instead of all at once. The jail will not fill up overnight, he said.
“On Day 1, we won’t have 254 extra people. It will grow over a period of time,” Burgess said. “We are trying to look at it from a financial standpoint and operations standpoint.”
The expansion, including additional staff, is being paid for with a tax increase approved in June 2019.
The 20-year tax, which took effect in October 2019, increased the local income tax to 1.2% from 1% and impacts all workers who live in Johnson County, regardless of what county they work in.
