TOLEDO, Ohio — Lucas County will receive a $2 million federal grant to help pay for the planning of a new county jail, officials announced Monday.
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Toledo, announced Monday that Lucas County would receive $2 million from U.S. Department of Justice for planning and design of a new jail that will include a comprehensive wing for diagnosis for mental and behavioral care.
Sadly, jails across the country have become the default place to house people needing mental health care and addiction treatment, Kaptur said at the Monday morning news conference. Designing a facility equipped to deal with the mental-health issues of inmates is critical, she said.
Commissioner Gary Byers said the recent jail death of Jamesiha Taylor, a woman waiting in the jail for a space in a psychiatric facility after she was found not competent to stand trial for the alleged assaults on her own children, demonstrated the need for better mental-health treatment at the jail.
The county plans to spend $6.5 million on the architectural and engineering preparations for this facility, Byers said. The $2 million announced by Kaptur Monday will be spent on this work, Byers said.
Byers said he expects the new jail to cost about $125 million.
County officials have not said where they plan to build a new jail, though Byers said Monday it will be downtown.
FULL NEWS CONFERENCE
Why a new jail?
Sheriff Mike Navarre said he is often asked why Lucas County even needs a new jail. His answer, he says, is that in the 1980s jail design evolved from the style used for the current Lucas County jail to use design that allows for direct supervision of prisoners.
"The answer is we need to build a new facility. This is absolutely the right thing to do," Navarre said. "And I think anyone who has been in that jail or been in a modern facility could argue that point."
He said county officials plan to announce later this year where they want to build the new jail.
"We have to build a facility where we would feel comfortable having our own family members incarcerated and we don't have that now," Navarre said.
Lucas County officials have worked for years to come up with a plan to replace the county's Spielbusch Avenue jail, which opened in 1977. For decades the county has operated under a federal consent decree to reduce inmate population at the overcrowded facility and more recently officials have pointed out its structural deficiencies that don't allow for direct supervision of prisoners.
Sheriff Mike Navarre has said he wants the county to build a new, downtown jail that does not require a tax levy for funding. He also has said he wants the jail to house only pre-trial inmates rather than a combination of prisoners awaiting trial and prisoners serving misdemeanor sentences.
Jail plans through the years
This is a departure from the county's most recent jail plan, which was a 2018 proposal for a new, $180 million jail complex along Detroit Avenue in north Toledo that would have included pre-trial inmates, post-conviction prisoners and a behavioral health solutions center.
The Detroit Avenue location was the third recent site county officials chose for the new jail, after public outcry about two previous sites in south Toledo forced them to scrap plans and continue searching for place to build the new jail.
But officials have discussed new-jail sites off and on for years. In 2003 the commissioners briefly discussed building a new jail inside the wire at the state's Toledo Correctional Institution.
Voters rejected the levy in 2018 that would have funded the new jail planned for Detroit Avenue and, a year later, approved a ballot measure that requires the county to build a new jail downtown.
In mid-2020 the commissioners discussed the health department building as a site for a new jail.
In June that year the county hired Poggemeyer Design Group to do pre-architectural work on a plan for a jail there. At the time the commissioners said they believed a three- or four-story jail on the health department site would cost about $100 million.
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