Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett announced Tuesday that he will begin closing the portion of the county’s jail inside the City-County Building and shipping inmates to facilities in other counties.
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 men and women residents will be transferred to jails in Rock, Iowa and Oneida counties, Barrett said in a statement.
“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 Sheriff’s Office will address staffing shortages by offering 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.
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The county is currently operating at more than 40 deputy positions under optimal staffing levels, Barrett said.
Dane County has been debating what to do with the aging CCB portion of its jail facilities for at least 20 years, and Barrett noted it has been nearly six years since a study determined that “Dane County should not consider extending the life of the CCB Jail, but should work towards getting out of the building with due haste.”
In June, Dane County Executive Joe Parisi and Barrett called for the rare step of asking voters for approval of a major county building project — specifically, a $10 million increase in the projected $176 million expansion and consolidation of the county’s jail facilities. Most inmates are housed in the county’s medium-security Public Safety Building, but several dozen remain at the 1950s-era maximum-security CCB facility while others on work release are kept in the minimum-security Ferris Huber Center on Rimrock Road.
The consolidation project calls for erecting a six-story tower adjacent to the main jail and closing the dangerously outdated cells in the City-County Building.
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.
In the past five years, the cost of the project has continued to climb while the scope of renovations has been scaled back. The current design includes up to 825 beds, or nearly 200 fewer than there are now across three jail sites.
Since the most recent conversations about a jail overhaul began a decade ago, Barrett said the county has spent $15.3 million on 29 studies. He said the current proposal would do away with solitary confinement and add spaces for mental health and medical treatment to help create a jail that is “safe, efficient, sustainable and rehabilitative.”
This story will be updated.
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