Dane County is weighing the possibility of allocating funds to restructure or expand the county’s jail, a move county officials say could allow for more job training for prisoners and saving taxpayer dollars.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi said he pledged $8 million to fund studies to evaluate several alternatives to the county’s jail system, including the possibility of building a completely new facility.
The Wisconsin State Journal reported the jail restructuring or expansion could cost more than $85 million, however Parisi said no estimates on the project’s budget have been made at this time.
Currently, the county jail system is divided into three buildings, a minimum security facility at the William H. Ferris Center, a medium security facility at the Public Safety building and a maximum security facility located at the City County Building, Elise Schaffer, spokesperson for the Dane County Sheriff’s Office, said.
Parisi said the county is looking to house all of the resources and cells in one building. Schaffer added the building would cover varying levels of security in order to hold the inmates in both minimum and maximum security facilities.
The current division of facilities is inefficient and does not have adequate space or resources for inmate job training, Parisi said.
“[There is] a need for efficiency and a need to, and a desire on our part, to provide an environment that is more conducive to rehabilitation, to job training and to getting people ready for the outside when they leave,” Parisi said.
The new jail design would potentially allow inmates to be more involved in more job rehabilitation activities, Parisi said. He said he believes the change could help people stay out of jail after they are released.
Schaffer said the current buildings are outdated and added deputies do not have good sight lines for viewing cells. Schaffer said the new jail would have a more modern design that would facilitate a better viewing of the inmates.
Parisi added more modern prisons are safer and require less staffing, which allows for more efficiency and saving taxpayer dollars.
He added the focus on job rehabilitation and goal of keeping people out of prison once they are released would also save money in the long run.
“A building would create efficiencies in scale and staff efficiencies so that we could save in operating costs,” Parisi said.
Schaffer said studies were prompted by an assessment that determined a large number of people who end up in jail have special needs, either mental illness or medical issues, that are not adequtely addressed by the current jail system.
“It was a number of issues, but one of the issues was the need for special needs space that would be for inmates who are either severely mentally ill or may just need more attention,” Schaffer said.
The designs for the prison will not be decided until December, Parisi said, because the studies need to be completed before a design, location or cost can be considered.
