How and where will Jacksonville build a new jail? Special committee will give answers.

For the first time since the Duval County Jail opened 32 years ago, the city is about to begin an in-depth analysis of how and where to build a new jail and administration building for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, an expensive proposition that would cost in the range of $380 million or more.

The Duval County Jail was the fifth-largest jail in the nation when it opened in 1991, rising high enough to add a sand-colored piece to the downtown skyline. But it's become a crowded facility that's showing its age and is difficult to operate as a safe place for inmates and corrections officers, Sheriff T.K. Waters has said.

City Council President Ron Salem, who announced at his inauguration ceremony his plan to spotlight the future of the jail, created a special City Council committee that will meet over the next year. The city has not identified how it would pay for a new jail and administration building, but Salem said the study will be a foundation for proceeding to that next step.

"I strongly believe the current facilities have exceeded their useful life and the location does not provide a favorable environment for inmates," Salem wrote in his July 17 memo creating the special committee.

City Council president: Ron Salem's immigrant parents shaped his rise to Jacksonville City Council president

"Stadium of the future": Jacksonville City Council hires consultant for negotiations

Office space: Florida Blue gets interest from sheriff as possible space for officers

"That facility is in dire need," City Council member Michael Boylan said after going on a tour of it on Thursday "It's got issues up and down every floor just about."

The kickoff of the special committee, which will have its first meeting on Aug. 16, comes as the Sheriff's Office has been offering $10,000 hiring bonuses to fill vacant corrections officer positions. Meanwhile, incidents of officers responding to resistance by inmates have soared, according to the Sheriff's Office annual reports.

The "open data report" released by the Sheriff's Office shows that in 2022, corrections officers were involved in applying some degree of force on inmates in 1,026 incidents. That was a spike from 2021 when the Sheriff's Office recorded 712 of those incidents, and is far higher than the 322 incidents in 2019, according to the annual reports

The Sheriff's Office also has faced problems delivering health care to inmates. Sheriff T.K. Waters announced Tuesday his office will end its contract with Armor Correctional Healthcare and replace it with NaphCare, a different private health care provider.

Waters' announcement came after reporting by The Tributary about deaths in the jail and a state investigation of the Armor contract because the company had been convicted in 2022 for the death of an inmate in Milwaukee. Florida state law prohibits municipal contracts with vendors convicted of a crime.

The upcoming study also will face pushback by residents who don't want the jail in their part of the city. Northside residents have already started to tell City Council members the city should not build jail facilities on their side of Jacksonville.

Boylan, tapped by Salem as chairman of the special committee, said the five-member group will begin the study with a clean slate on possible locations for the future buildings.

"Our focus is first and foremost on making sure we build a facility that meets the needs of our community," he told City Council members at the end of their meeting last Tuesday. "That location may or may not be downtown. It may be in different parts of town."

Two of the topics identified by Salem involve how a new jail would affect the provision of health care and mental health treatment for inmates. The jail has long has a reputation as the biggest mental health facility in the city because of the large number of people held behind bars who have untreated mental health disorders.

Budget documents pencil in $381 million beyond next five years

The idea of relocating the jail, officially known as the John E. Goode Pre-Trial Detention Facility, and the Police Memorial Building from their current location has bounced around for years. In 1991, the jail was in a part of downtown that was an industrial waterfront, but the development of The Shipyards has shifted to plans for a large riverfront park and a relocated MOSH museum that will be next to a Four Seasons Hotel and Residences that Jaguars owner Shad Khan is building near the sports complex.

In a carryover from the capital improvement programs during Lenny Curry's term as mayor, the proposed list of projects submitted by Mayor Donna Deegan continues to show three related projects for consideration in the "beyond five-year" category. That designation puts them them on the radar screen but doesn't identify any financially feasible way to pay for them.

The proposed capital improvement program shows a $244 million price tag for building a 3,000-bed jail off Lanie Road on the Northside where the Montgomery Correctional Center is located.

A second 500-bed jail for short-term holding of inmates making court appearance would be built somewhere in downtown at an estimated cost of nearly $41 million, according to the summary in the capital improvements program.

The third piece of the future construction would be a new and bigger Police Memorial Building for the Sheriff's Office headquarters at an estimated cost of $96 million. The Police Memorial Building, located on Bay Street in front of the jail, was built in 1977. The Sheriff's Office has outgrown it and also uses space in other downtown buildings.

Boylan said he expects the current cost estimate for a new jail is on the low end. He said the opening phase of the study will be about what kind of jail the city wants to build and whether it would be better to have more than one facility in different locations serving specific needs.

"After we say this is what we want, then what we can afford is the next step in the process," he said.

Salem had planned to bring on board an outside consultant to assist the committee. But after filing legislation to hire CGL Companies for "general consulting and advisory services" regarding the jail study, Salem said he will withdraw that legislation. He said the special committee should be able to get the information it needs without hiring a consultant.

Deegan has said she is fine with City Council studying jail options, but she has not made any commitment to support building a new jail.

During the campaign for mayor, Daniel Davis, who lost in the May runoff election to Deegan, vowed to build a new jail during his four-year term if elected. He said in an interview in May with the Financial News and Daily Record that there are different ways the city could forge partnerships with private entities to build a new jail so it's "not as big a hit on the capital program upfront."

Salem also has said he wants to explore financing possibilities.

"There are ways of doing a jail where someone can build it for you and lease it back to you where you avoid a lot of the upfront costs," Salem said in an interview earlier this month. "I think that's one of the things that we need to explore as a community and see if that's a viable way of doing it."

Waters supports building a new jail, saying it's a matter of safety for inmates and those who work in the jail.

"We cannot have a jail that's dilapidated, that's outlived its usefulness and is a problem for our inmates and our police and our corrections officers," Waters said at a town hall he hosted earlier this month. "We can no longer have a jail that's so crowded. We can no longer have a jail where things are not working the way they're supposed to work."

When the Duval County Jail opened in April 1991, the Sheriff's Office moved 1,700 inmates into it from seven facilities. For a recent one-month period, the average daily inmate population stood at 2,686, according to a report given by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office to the City Council Auditor. The daily average inmate population over a 24-hour period on Wednesday was 2,605, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Salem said the special committee also will seek feedback from the State Attorney's Office, the Office of the Public Defender, the Clerk of the Courts and the judicial system. Healthcare and mental health treatment will be part of the discussion.

"We're going to bring in all the stakeholders and find out their concerns," Salem said. "We're going to look at locations. We're going to look at ancillary services."

Joining Boylan on the special committee will be council members Randy White, Rahman Johnson, Jimmy Peluso and Chris Miller.

Peluso, whose council district contains downtown, said the jail has "outlived its shelf life" and "on top of that, it's horribly misplaced."

He said one of the main questions for the study will be to build one large facility for a new jail or construct smaller facilities in more than one place.

"The jail must move, regardless of whether it's in the next couple of fiscal years under Mayor Deegan or in the next 10 years," he said. "I'm glad that we're doing it (the study) now."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville will study building new county jail