Lt. Jeffrey Heil manually opens an empty cell in an eight-person cellblock as he gives a tour of the seventh floor at the Dane County Jail, which is in the process of being closed and inmates relocated because of a staffing shortage.
Citing staffing shortages, Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett said Tuesday he will begin closing a portion of the county’s jail inside the City-County Building that has for years been described as inhumane.
The east section of the seventh floor of the City-County Building, which is the oldest area of the jail, will be closed and about 65 male and female inmates will be transferred to jails in Rock, Iowa and Oneida counties, Barrett said in a statement. The transfers began Tuesday morning and will cost around $50 to $60 per inmate every day.
“A lack of safe and humane jail space, along with ongoing staffing shortages, has brought us to the difficult decision to place some of our jail residents in other counties,” Barrett said. “I will continue to advocate for a facility to be built in Dane County which reflects our community values.”
The dire conditions inside the maximum-security jail in the City-County Building have been documented for years, and Barrett has previously characterized the facility as a lawsuit waiting to happen. But until now, neither Barrett nor his predecessor, Dave Mahoney, had used their authority to close the facility.
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About 200 people will remain incarcerated at the City-County Building, said Elise Schaffer, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office. As of Tuesday morning, there were 685 inmates across the county’s three jail facilities at the City-County Building, the Public Safety Building and the William H. Ferris Center on Madison’s South Side.
The closure of part of the City-County Building is but one step the Sheriff’s Office has taken in response to a staffing crunch in recent days. On Thursday, deputies were given an indefinite “alert status” that puts four deputies on call to fill vacancies during each of the day’s three shifts.
The shower area of an empty eight-person cellblock on the seventh floor of the Dane County Jail, the oldest part of the facility, which is being closed and inmates relocated.
“Implementing alert status with no end date is a significant action by our agency to help with our immediate staffing issues,” the Sheriff’s Office said in an email to employees. The county is currently operating at more than 40 deputy positions under optimal staffing levels, Barrett said in his statement.
Another 24 deputies are either on restricted duty, family leave or worker’s comp, and staffing shortages “definitely compounded” the decision to close part of the City-County building jail, Schaffer added.
“But this has been something that has also been in our thoughts and conversations for several months,” she said of the decision to close the jail.
Opponent responds
Dane County Sheriff’s Detective Anthony Hamilton, a Republican who is running against Barrett in the November election, said the Democratic sheriff is to blame for the situation, accusing him of “risking the safety of Dane County residents by allowing staff levels to fall to unprecedented lows.”
“The staffing crisis is poised to get worse without strong leadership,” Hamilton said in a statement. “With so many Dane County deputies nearing retirement; absent new recruits, the agency roster is poised to drop to below 300 deputies — well short of its 478 authorized positions.”
To speed up recruiting, Barrett said, the Sheriff’s Office will offer a “lateral hiring opportunity” for sworn positions, meaning officers or deputies from other law enforcement agencies can be hired without sacrificing their accumulated years of service.
Deputies had previously been put on a temporary alert status in December 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Schaffer said. She was unsure if deputies had ever been put on an indefinite alert status before.
Rising costs
The decision to close part of the City-County Building comes as the County Board continues to grapple with how to consolidate its existing jail facilities into a single campus consisting of the Public Safety Building and a yet-to-be-built tower. But rising construction costs have prompted supervisors to scale back the scope of the project.
In March, the board appropriated about $16 million to build a $176 million six-story, 825-bed facility that would replace the facility at the City-County Building. Originally, the county wanted to build a seven-story jail with 922 beds.
But costs have pushed that iteration of the jail even further from reality. In May, County Executive Joe Parisi said that plan was about $9.8 million short.
New proposal
To alleviate the funding gap, the Black Caucus of the County Board unveiled a plan on Tuesday to build a five-story tower with 725 beds. The new plan also frees up bed space by calling for the removal of all acute medical housing from the fourth floor of the proposed tower, calling instead for inmates with severe medical needs to be transferred to local hospitals.
In June, Parisi and Barrett called for the rare step of asking voters for approval of a major county building project — specifically to cover the $10 million shortfall.
The County Board initially included $76 million in the 2018 budget to construct additional floors on top of the jail facility at the Public Safety Building. But it was later learned the structure couldn’t support the load, prompting officials to plan the tower addition.
A common area of an empty eight-person cellblock on the seventh floor of the Dane County Jail.
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