A recent needs assessment evaluating the Johnson County Jail and Sheriff’s Office has led to progress in the discussion for an entirely new building.

The poor condition of the current facility, located at 511 S. Capitol St., was discussed in a Johnson County Board of Supervisors meeting in August 2023. During the meeting, the project management company Faithful + Gould reported the current facility should be demolished.

“Everybody can agree the existing building is at the end of its life,” Johnson County Sheriff Brad Kunkel said.

Johnson County Facilities Director David Curtis addressed the Johnson County Board of Supervisors in a work session Wednesday morning to review proposals for the building.

“We’re all aware that the building’s lived its life, and that’s putting it gently,” he said before beginning his summary.

In his report, Curtis mentioned the roof leaking every time it rains, the air conditioning units being well past life expectancy, and exterior brickwork appearing to be failing.

The county received requests for proposals from three architecture and engineering firms: Axiom Consultants, Shive-Hattery, and Vantage Architects, Curtis said.

Curtis recommended the county continue to work with Axiom, an engineering consulting firm that completed a structural property condition assessment in 2023 and did ongoing monitoring of the structure in May 2024. The report states Axiom’s proposal is the most realistic for the county to follow.

According to Curtis’ report, there is $300,000 budgeted for jail construction, which would more than cover the approximately $36,500 project needed for basic repairs. The cost is subject to change based on Axiom’s initial investigations.

The final Johnson County Jail and Sheriff’s Office needs assessment report, a $75,000 study conducted by Shive-Hattery, was presented to the Board of Supervisors in a work session on July 10.

According to the report, the current design is operationally inefficient. The facility was constructed in 1981 and was designed for 46 inmates and 50 staff. However, over 100 people currently work in the building, Kunkel said.

The report addressed several other concerns in the building, including toilets, door swings, and turn swings not complying with ADA guidelines. Inmate intake, processing, visitations, and food services are all located on the second floor, which was flagged as problematic.

According to the report, the Johnson County Jail has been operating above functional capacity for over a decade. Johnson County has spent nearly $16 million since 2003 to house its overflow of inmates in other nearby county jails.

The needs assessment found keeping up with current inmate trends in Johnson County would require an estimated increased need of three beds per year. If the county were to go forward with the project laid out by Shive-Hattery, the new jail would have 140 beds and meet the needs of the county for a minimum of 20 years.

Shive-Hattery estimated a maximum cost of just over $83 million for a new jail and sheriff’s office in the report, should the county choose to proceed. The other option outlined in the report is to forgo building a jail and only proceed with a sheriff’s office and temporary holding facility.

Kunkel voiced his concerns in the July 10 work session, stating that doing nothing would be ineffective, as the county will always need a place for booking, intake, court holdovers, and releases.

“We would still be building, in effect, a jail anyway,” Kunkel said in the meeting. “We would have to staff it, and we would still need a place for the sheriff’s office and everything else that we do.”

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Supervisor Lisa Green-Douglass voiced during the meeting that she would like to see the county move forward with the project and offer spaces for healing within the new jail.

As a previous board member for Iowa’s 6th Judicial District, Green-Douglass said she saw the recidivism rate — or the rate at which people who are convicted of a crime commit an offense after being released — fall to three percent. Green-Douglass said that is one of the best rates in the country and believed it was due to community-based programs.

“If you have places where people can consult with their counsel, their family, education courses, trainings — then you can to that point whereupon release you’ve got a lot more ability for reentry,” Green-Douglass said in the meeting.

Supervisor V Fixmer-Oraiz addressed other worries during the meeting, saying they would rather see money from the project go toward rehabilitation programs.

“We know that jails interrupt families, destroy people’s careers. There’s nothing rehabilitative about a jail,” Fixmer-Oraiz said during the meeting. “You cannot give somebody care in a jail. You just fundamentally cannot. The idea that we would even expand mental healthcare in the jail is absurd to me.”

Aside from the approximate $80 million for the cost of the building, the rest of the money would be invested in the land, personnel, and other general upkeep items, totaling approximately $800 million over the course of 20 years.

Fixmer-Oraiz said they would prefer the money go toward something like affordable housing across the county.

No plans have been solidified concerning the next steps for the jail, but more loose ends will be tied up in the Sept. 18 work session, Kunkel said.