Progress toward building a new Monroe County Jail is delayed again, more than three years after an independent report found the current facility was failing to uphold inmates’ constitutional rights.
Last week, county officials and residents expected the Monroe County Commissioners to approve the $11.375 million purchase of 52 acres northwest of Bloomington as a building site for the new jail. However, the commissioners, in a split vote Sept. 25, chose to delay the long-anticipated selection.
The commissioners indicated this summer they planned to move forward with the purchase agreement. However, the board received last minute information about another potential building site on Vernal Pike, prompting commissioners Julie Thomas and Lee Jones to vote for the delay.
Commissioner Penny Githens, however, pushed back, saying that every delay has “a fiscal cost to it and a human cost.”
The postponement also came about a week after the Monroe County Council voted to advertise a new local income tax increase to support the jail’s construction. The council originally advertised a 0.2 percent LIT increase but lowered the rate to 0.175 percent.
Why is Monroe County building a new jail?
County officials have been trying to address conditions in the Monroe County Jail for more than three years. But issues within the jail go back over 16 years, after the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed a lawsuit against Monroe County in 2008. In the suit, the ACLU of Indiana alleged the jail’s overcrowding and conditions violated inmates’ constitutional rights.
The ACLU of Indiana and Monroe County eventually reached a private settlement, requiring the jail to decrease its inmate capacity. While the original terms of the settlement said the lawsuit would be dismissed in January 2023, the ACLU of Indiana decided to extend its deadline for dismissal to January 2024.
More than a decade after the ACLU of Indiana’s lawsuit, a group of independent consultants released a report that found the county’s jail, located on College Avenue and built in 1986, had exceeded its structural life cycle and was “incapable of consistently ensuring and sustaining constitutional levels of care and custody.” The consultants also recommended Monroe County to undertake a study to compare the costs of renovating compared to constructing a new jail.
Why have there been delays?
The jail expansion project has faced delays before.
One debate that originally stalled progress was whether the county should build a new jail or renovate the current facility. In the 2021 report, consultants estimated it would cost around $56 million to renovate the existing jail on College Avenue. After hearing the estimated hard construction costs — around $80.9 million for a new 400-bed jail — county officials indicated they thought building a new facility would be the best option.
Still, some local advocates, including anti-incarceration advocacy group Care Not Cages, have opposed the construction of a new jail and support renovation. In interviews with the Indiana Daily Student earlier this month, three Care Not Cages advocates said they want the county to invest in community and mental health resources instead.
Another major delay came when came when the Bloomington City Council denied Monroe County’s request to rezone land in the city for a building site. This led county officials to start looking for a building site outside municipal limits. Since the county must complete time-intensive environmental studies and land appraisals for each potential building site, this setback meant a selection was pushed further away.
Slow progress on the expansion project has garnered criticism from some county residents, officials and political hopefuls. Monroe County Sheriff Ruben Marté even sent an email to county leaders in February 2023 stating the commissioners were refusing “to move in a timely manner and don’t wish to partner with us to ensure the safety of staff and residents.”
County commissioners and council members have acknowledged the impact of these delays, including during the meeting Sept. 25, and emphasized that the site selection is one of the biggest decisions they will make in office.
“The human suffering that’s being caused by our lack of movement is not something that should be ignored,” Jones said during the meeting.
At the Sept. 25 meeting, the commissioners did not indicate when they will revisit a purchase agreement.
