IOWA CITY — All it takes is a walk through the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office and Jail building and the issues are clear. Down nearly every hallway are buckets to catch water leaking in from outside, even on the bottom floor. There are cracks splitting through bricks on both the interior and exterior walls. And the iron supports for the exterior bricks are rusting and separating from the rest of the wall. The 44-year-old building is near the end of its life, according to Johnson County Sheriff Brad Kunkel, who said, “The jail we have in place today is not compliant with modern standards.”
Because the building was built before modern standards were set, Johnson County was grandfathered in. Kunkel noted that while their jail is operational for now, it is not a good look to fall short of those standards. Kunkel said, “The Iowa Department of Corrections sets the standards and a failure to comply with them could result in a closure.”
The sheriff’s office and jail spent a lot of time on ballots in the early 2010’s. In 2012, a bond referendum was held for a vote for a new justice center. It would have been placed behind the courthouse and would act as an addition to the jail. It failed by 4%, needing 60% approval from the voters. They tried to get the bond approved a few months later, this time whittling down on some of the bed space to reduce some of the costs. It failed again, this time by 6%. In 2014 they tried another bond with reduced costs, this time just for courthouse improvements. This failed as well.
In 2022 the county hired a company to do a facility condition assessment of all county-owned buildings. The report was completed in 2023 and gave the sheriff’s office and jail a score of 104%. In the case of this specific study, a higher score means the building is in worse shape. Kunkel said, “Anything given a score above 60% was very poor and, in [the study’s] wording, should be considered for demolition.”
That report found cracking in the cement bricks and estimated repairs would cost over $5 million.
In 2023, the jail had their annual inspection. It was their first in person inspection since COVID. The inspector found many of the same issues that the 2022 report highlighted. Because of the concern for the building’s structural integrity, a local company, Axiom Consultants, was contracted to inspect the structural damage.
According to Kunkel, the company found; significant cracking in the concrete walls, areas in the kitchen where the floor tiles had buckled because of the change of temperature throughout the year, serious deterioration of the brick work on the exterior, the supports that are supposed to hold the brick in place has gaps and now no longer supports the walls, concerns of water infiltration into the building, the roof is in need of repair, and the shell of the building needed repaired. Kunkel said they were told that there are signs of these issues actively worsening. The estimate to repair all those issues was between $2-$4 million and the replacement cost of the entire building – that does not fit the current needs of the county – would be $9-$13 million.
“They would not state at this time the building is in danger of imminent structural failures of any sort, but there are concerning signs that should be addressed soon to prevent larger and more costly damage to upper building structure which could cascade to other parts of the building,” said Kunkel of Axiom’s report.
This damage and the need for more space caused the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to budget for a space needs study. The study cost $75,000 and was done to give the board and Kunkel an idea for what a future sheriff’s office and jail would need to serve the community well into the future. Shive-Hattery Architecture and Engineering completed this study earlier this summer and presented it to the board on July 10.
The study found that to suit the Johnson County needs for the future, the jail needs to be able to hold 140 inmates.
Shive presented two main options going forward, to build a new facility or do nothing. Contrary to the connotation of each option, the “do nothing” route would cost more over the next 20 years. The “do nothing” route means using the current facility until it inevitably needs to be closed. With that, they would have to build a new Sheriff’s office and holding cells, but they could completely outsource holding inmates in jail to the surrounding counties.
Kunkel said a plan like the “do nothing” plan would cost roughly $170 million for the new office and to hold the inmates out of county. Currently, they pay $60 per day per inmate housed in a different county. They have four part time drivers to transport those inmates to and from the county for court dates and hearings. Kunkel said if the county were to house all inmates in neighboring counties, they would have to add a new division for transportation. This adds the costs of employing more full-time workers, plus the transportation costs.
There are just over 70 Johnson County inmates. That number is expected to continue to gradually climb as the population continues to increase. The cost of housing inmates in other county jails is expected to increase as inflation increases, says Kunkel. The cost of housing the current 73 inmates out of county would be about $1.5 million per year without adding the additional costs noted earlier.
It is not just the cost of housing and transporting the inmates that worries Kunkel. He believes there is a significant amount of added risk involved if they housed all inmates out of the county. Kunkel said, “Every mile that we are on the road transporting inmates we are exposed to risk because we have to provide care to the inmate that is in the back of the car. If we blow a tire and an inmate gets injured, we’re responsible for their health, we’re liable for what happens to them. We are undertaking risk that we shouldn’t have to.”
The other option would be a brand-new facility. The concept Shive created would take up 15-20 acres. This would mean that there would have to be a new location for the facility. This would allow for better parking and space for training spaces and community meetings. Kunkel believes the changing of location would be an added benefit. “It doesn’t make sense to have the sheriff’s office located on this [current] site either. If deputies are here and they have to respond urgently out in the county they are having to go through downtown Iowa City. There is danger in that.”
The concept for the new facility would hold 140 beds and it could be expanded to hold 240 beds. It would be 111,300 square feet and cost $83.25 million to build. The building itself would cost just under $60 million and would be quadruple the size of the current building, which is about 25,000 square feet. The rest of the cost would come from the price to acquire the new land, demolition of the current facility, design and construction contingencies, utility extensions, and miscellaneous administrative things. Kunkel said it would be easier to function with the building being only one level. The department would be able to staff the building with their current staff. The funding for this building would be from a bond referendum and would need to be voted on by the voters of Johnson County.
The concept is not the final blueprint for a new facility if they choose to go that route. Kunkel said the Iowa City Police Department is going through a parallel process. There has been some discussion about creating a joint facility for both departments to operate in. Kunkel said, “I think it’s an option we have to explore here as we explore all of our options.”
Shive found in their study that the Johnson County diversion programs have been very effective. Johnson County has a 40% lower incarceration rate than other counties facing similar conditions. Kunkel said this is because of many different factors – legislative, cultural, and environmental – in the past 15 years. There is a long-standing jail diversion program in Johnson County, and they have added mobile crisis and the University of Iowa’s SHOUT (Students Helping OUT, a program providing trained student ambassadors who patrol during special events with a focus on bystander intervention and overall safety relying more on community service as opposed to law enforcement), among other programs, to help limit incarcerations. Kunkel said COVID impacted the jail population, and he believes it is responsible for a portion of the 40% reduction. He also has seen a cultural shift of local law enforcement about how they address alcohol and minor drug offenses and focus on de-escalation.
“We have done so many things that have affected the system it is so hard to see. It has helped the population decline over time, but it’s still going to climb. A lot of counties don’t do near what we do and yet their [jail] populations are a little lower than normal. Clearly something else is affecting it too. What we are doing here is a lot of successes and it is money well invested, but jail diversion efforts don’t stop all crime,” said Kunkel.
The jail is a worry for many people in the county. Kunkel said the topic has been the issue he hears about most from the public. The public that Kunkel has heard from have been supportive of a new county jail. “They are not asking if, it is when. I get emails from people wanting to know what they can do to support it,” said Kunkel.
Some members on the board are not completely supportive of the new jail. Kunkel believes it would be foolish to turn around a pay someone else again to do a study and further delay the long process to building a new facility. Kunkel said, “We have a study, I think it is a credible study, done by a credible company, with a longstanding reputation in the world of architecture. I have no reason to think we need to do another study.”
Kunkel will meet with the Board of Supervisors again in late August to discuss the next steps. It is unlikely there will be a decision before the November election, but the vote for the referendum would take place within the next two years if they decide to go that route.