Hamilton, Zietlow write joint letter against building new Monroe County jail

At Tuesday’s meeting of the Monroe County council, former Bloomington mayor John Hamilton read aloud a letter that he and former city councilmember and county commissioner Charlotte Zietlow wrote in opposition to the construction of a new jail for Monroe County. Zietlow is the nonagenarian namesake of Monroe County’s Charlotte T. Zietlow Justice Center, which houses the existing jail at College Avenue and 7th Street.

On the county council’s Tuesday (Oct. 28) agenda was an appropriation that would have paid for the $11.375 million property at North Park, which had been planned as the site of a new county jail. The outcome of the county council’s vote was unanimously not in favor of the appropriation, which meant the appropriation failed. The vote came around 11 p.m., which was six hours after the meeting started.

Later, on the advice of legal counsel, another vote was taken, this time on an explicit denial of the appropriation, which passed 6–0. It was after midnight and by then councilor Marty Hawk had departed from the meeting.

The B Square will report separately on the deliberations of county councilors and public commentary on the question of purchasing North Park. Here’s the text of the letter from Zietlow and Hamilton.

We don’t need a bigger jail

By Charlotte Zietlow and John Hamilton

Bloomington should reject plans to build a giant new jail on the outskirts of town. We two haven’t always agreed during our combined nearly a century of activism and experience in local and state politics, but we do now: our community has no need for—indeed we’d be greatly harmed by—the wasteful expenditure on a huge new jail.

Some decisions change our community’s trajectory. Protecting our county courthouse from demolition decades ago was one. How much better off are we with a vibrant downtown and a beautifully restored historic courthouse? We face a similar pivot point today.

Several county officials and private jail consultants urge abandoning the downtown Zietlow Justice Building and building a massive new government complex in the suburban area west of the interstate near Ellettsville.

The cost is mind-boggling: its $300+ million would be the largest public sector investment in our history by far, nearly doubling the size of our current jail and tripling the overall size of the justice system. It’s a dangerous and inhumane plan.

Abandoning downtown by uprooting our entire justice system is itself a bad enough idea to stop the plan. It would drain hundreds of daily employees, visitors, and customers/clients who patronize stores and restaurants.

Doubling our jail size is preposterous. Years ago we peaked at around 300 inmates on an average day. We’ve recently been as low as 160 and now average a little over 200. Planning for a jail of 400 or 500 beds is immoral.
America and Indiana already are dramatically over-incarcerated. We imprison 3 times more people than Mexico per capita, 7 times more than Canada, and 10 times more than several European countries.

We don’t need more jail cells, we need better services.

Our judges, prosecutor, sheriff and other criminal justice players have improved what was a deficient jail and system and brought in innovations like drug and mental health courts, to better serve our community (convicted serious criminals are generally sent to state prisons; our jail detains those awaiting trial or with short sentences).

Instead of building a bloated new jail, we should improve what we have and invest significant new money in the work we know improves lives and our community: social services like mental health counseling, addiction treatments, affordable housing options, and more.

Local nonprofits like New Leaf New Life already work to make incarceration more rare and brief. But they always struggle to have enough money to stay afloat and meet the current needs.

We have resources to do better. Let’s split the current tax revenue that some want entirely for a big new jail – about $20 million per year – and use half for jail and facility improvements, and half for new services to keep our neighbors out of jail.

$10 million a year in more and better counseling, treatment, and housing can dramatically change our community starting immediately. In the last 20 years juvenile incarceration has been cut by 75% in America. If we do the same for adults, we could have a jail for just 75 people by 2040. How about that as a goal?

The HT recently reported on Kimberley Martin, who spent years facing homelessness and mental health challenges in our community, in and out of our justice system for trespassing, public urination, failure to appear in court and the like – nonviolent all. Our courts, police, prosecutors, jailers and others spent untold hours and money dealing with Kimberley. But she didn’t need a jail cell. She needed help that we couldn’t give her. She died this month at age 64 in police custody awaiting booking into jail.

Let’s make our community a national leader in humane diversion and alternatives to jail. For Kimberley, and all of us.