Proposal to close New Bedford's Ash Street Jail now includes two options
NEW BEDFORD — Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux said he wanted to impress the legislative delegation touring the Ash Street Jail Friday morning with an important fact: This is one old building.
It's 135 years old, actually, and Heroux's idea is that it's time to move on, close it, and bring jail operations to the main House of Correction complex in Dartmouth. It's a move that will save money on utilities and upkeep by moving away from the massive 200,000-square-foot building to more modern housing in Dartmouth.
He added the move would also allow for more inmate exposure to programs, which are more readily available at the main campus. It would also improve inmate and staff safety by consolidating resources, and it would reduce correction officer overtime that can impact performance.
Heroux told the legislators as they toured Ash Street Jail's cell-lined corridors, "It's not a house of horrors. It's not dirty. There are no rats running around. But it's old."
Ash Street's approximately 100 current inmates include those awaiting trial - which can take up to five years in some instances - and inmates arrested by local police departments that need cell space. There are also 18 sentenced inmates who work in the jail.
Heroux's initial idea was to move the Ash Street inmates to the former ICE detention center at the main campus. That would require retrofitting the building to add 100 single cells.
The inmates at Ash Street require solitary cells due chiefly to gang or enemy issues.
He said Friday, though, that they's considering a new idea to retrofit an unused 9,600-square-foot gymnasium in the main building to replace the Ash Street Jail. The gym space would be much cheaper to retrofit, he said, and the ceiling is high enough for two tiers of cells. The closed 16,000-square-foot ICE detention center could be refitted as the House of Correction's training academy.
He said that could be done for a a few hundred thousand dollars, and would also save the Sheriff's Office $144,000 in annual rental fees for its current training academy space.
The first plan to use the ICE detention center as the new jail would cost an estimated $10 million. The second plan with the gym would cost less, but even if the cost were comparable, it would have the added attraction of creating the new training academy space.
Heroux said either option would pay for itself over time in savings on Ash Street upkeep and the academy rental fee.
He said he didn't ask the legislators to make the tour Friday to hit the them up for the $10 million.His "big ask," he said, was that they support a feasibility study through the state Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance to determine the best course of action to replace Ash Street Jail. That would cost $200,000 to $300,000, he said. Maybe less.
He estimated it would take six months to arrange the study funding at the State House if legislators were amenable, then another 12 months to perform the study.
The overall project will take several years to complete, he said. The current timeline if all goes well would be completion in 2027-2028.
The legislators taking the tour Friday, which ended back at the main campus, included Reps. Tony Cabral, Chris Hendricks, Carole Fiola, Alan Silvia, Carol Doherty, Paul Schmid, and state Sen. Paul Feeney.
Hendricks said following the tour that he thought a feasibility study would be the right place to start, and that he supported the idea.
Doherty said the possibilities should be looked into considering the age and inadequacies of the Ash Street building.
New Bedford Police Chief Paul Oliveira also took the tour. The New Bedford Police Dept. has no cells of its own and relies on Ash Street for its arrests.
This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: Proposal to close New Bedford's Ash Street Jail now includes 2 options
