The Dane County Jail, primarily located above the City-County Building in downtown Madison, was first built in 1953, and contains no medical or mental health beds.
Instead, jail residents experiencing a medical or mental health emergency are held in solitary confinement cells made of metal and concrete.
In June, I visited the jail myself. I sat in a solitary confinement cell in the City-County Building jail, where incarcerated women who were pregnant would spend their time. There is just one, dim light in the cell that never shuts off. Dark enough to keep you from reading during the day, bright enough to keep you awake at night. The only sound you would hear in those cells is the sound of the metal food slot, which opens three times a day.
For decades, the debate over whether or not to build a new jail has simmered, intensified in recent years by those opposed to any new facility rather than more community resources for those incarcerated. Plans in past years have been stymied by the physical limitations of construction.
Back in February of this year, Sheriff Barrett framed building a new jail as a step towards criminal justice reform.
“The City-County Building is doing exactly as it was designed and built to do, and that is to be harsh, inhumane, and a reactionary punishment to crime. In 2022, we have a new philosophy on criminal justice reform,” Barrett says.
But in 2022, the Dane County Board again stalled over the plan – whether to fund it further amidst some opposition from those who believe there shouldn’t be a new jail at all, or cut down on the project to bring it closer to its original cost.
At the beginning of this year, the Dane County Board was presented with two plans. One would keep the design more-or-less as approved in 2019, but would up the cost by $22 million dollars. The second option was cheaper, only $7 million over the budget, but scaled down the jail to six floors for around 800 jail residents.
Neither of those plans were approved by the board, and by March, officials reached a new a compromise. That plan, introduced just one day before it was voted on by the Dane County Board, still went over budget by around $16 million dollars. The plan also reduced the size of the jail, but this time a six story facility for 825 residents.
After hours of debate, the plan was deemed a good compromise, and the board approved this new plan on a 29 to 7 vote.
But that peace did not last long, because by May, County Executive Joe Parisi announced that the price tag had jumped once again to around $176 million dollars, $10 million dollars more than the board approved just a few months ago.
New proposals were drafted. One simply suggested adding $10 million dollars to the budget, while another proposed building an even smaller jail to fit the budget while proposing policy initiatives to reduce the population of the jail. Both plans failed to pass.
During budget deliberations, a very similar plan was unveiled: build a five story jail with room for around 697 residents, and include half a million dollars for criminal justice reforms to cut down on the jail population.
District 15 Supervisor April Kigeya, who spearheaded the plan for a smaller jail, says that the smaller jail would work if they looked at the facility for what it is: a county jail.
“The sheriff was asking for space for different programming and such, but the Dane County Jail is meant for a temporary situation, right?“ Kigeya says. “We don’t need space for all these different programs in there, because folks shouldn’t be in there long term. That defeats the whole purpose of the jail, we’re talking about a county jail verses a prison.”
The County Board approved a budget that included the smaller, five-story jail plan in November. At the time, the board also acknowledged that current designs would need to be scrapped, adding even more of a delay to the project.
While approving most of the rest of the county’s $853 million dollar budget, Executive Parisi nixed the plan to build a five-story jail, reverting to the jail proposal agreed to in March. Parisi pointed to the design work already underway as the fastest path to closing the current jail.
Supervisor Kigeya says that she was frustrated that the plan that finally made it through the council ultimately got nixed by Parisi.
“It was a shock, because he’s never intervened and said ‘this is the Dane County’s role,’ and then all of a sudden, he wanted to interject and say he’s not for that,” Kigeya says.
Parisi only vetoed the jail, meaning that the money to fund criminal justice reforms made it through the budget. To decide how to use the money, the county created a new Criminal Justice Initiatives Committee. While the committee has not yet scheduled its first meeting, they will dissolve on July 1 of next year, and present their findings to the board at that time.
After a year of rising costs and contentious debates over the future of the Dane County Jail, where are we now?
The project is still projected to be $10 million dollars over budget, with Board President Patrick Miles telling the State Journal that he fears the project could still rise in price.
Last week, Parisi brought forward two new options to move the project forward. The first option would bring the project up to the projected cost, moving $13.5 million away from other, already authorized projects to the jail. That’s slightly more than the projected cost of the project to account for any minor price increase the project may encounter. This would allow the project to move forward without needing to increase how much the county is borrowing.
The second option would put the issue before voters in a referendum next April. That referendum would ask whether the county should borrow an additional $13.5 million dollars. In order for that referendum to get on the ballot for the April 4 election, the county board would need to approve that move at their next meeting on January 19.
District 3 Supervisor and former Board Chair Analiese Eicher says that she supports both options, but if the board can’t agree to authorize the funding themselves, they need to send the issue to the voters.
“A number of folks have said, ‘we want the public’s input, we want the public to decide,’ but then there are other folks who are on the side of, ‘well the public shouldn’t be making that decision because it’s the board’s responsibility,’” Eicher says. “Well, right now the board isn’t taking any responsibility under chair Miles, because nothing is happening.”
But County Board Chair Patrick Miles says that he doesn’t like either of those options, and would rather wait to give more money to the project once the final cost estimate is released in March.
“We aren’t going to expend $166 million on day one of the project,” Miles says. “This is a multi-year project to build this facility, so we can begin that work with the existing funding that’s authorized, and later we can find a final cost when we have an estimate of what that cost is going to be.”
Both options go to the board at their next meeting on January 19th. The final design for a six story jail is set to be released next month.
Photo courtesy: Nate Wegehaupt / WORT News Team
