Residents may voice their concerns regarding the state of the Muscogee County Jail and the city’s $250 million plan to rebuild it by emailing Mayor Skip Henderson directly at SkipHenderson@columbusga.org, while cc’ing their respective city council members on the email.

This story was originally published on January 16, 2023.

COLUMBUS, Ga. — Deputy city manager Pam Hodge recently revealed that the Muscogee County Jail may cost the city more than $250 million to rebuild.

The most costly option proposed by Hodge is currently projected to cost as much as $277.5 million to taxpayers.

With violent crime continuing to rise throughout the city, many residents have pointed out how the jail’s overcrowding, poor operations, and atrocious conditions may be resulting in the city choosing not to fairly prosecute offenders nor sentence hard jail time, which puts violent offenders back on the street to recidivate into committing even more violent crime.

The jail's state of shambles comes just three years after the Department of Justice released the jail from its 20 years of federal oversight. The DOJ had sued Muscogee County in 1999 after the discovery of atrocious conditions that violated inmates’ constitutional rights. That lawsuit resulted in the DOJ closely monitoring the Muscogee County Jail until July of 2019.

Now, according to Hodge’s briefing during the city council meeting held on January 3, 2023, the jail has quickly fallen into an atrocious state of disrepair which was described as both physically and operationally dangerous. Hodge’s presentation can be found in-full on pages 174-200 of the meeting’s agenda packet.

The jail, located at 700 10th Street, has a capacity of 1,069 beds and is composed of four sections: the Columbus Stockade, the County Jail, and Towers I & II.

According to Hodge’s update, the County Jail in particular has encountered significant maintenance issues. The city is currently looking at an assessment of the facility to determine how those issues should be best addressed. 

THE OUTSIDE ASSESSMENT

Last year in 2022, an assessment of the jail was performed by Jericho Design Group. The firm was contracted through other consultants who are currently looking into the Government Center and the City Hall building. 

According to the assessment performed by Jericho, most of the facility components at the jail are “at the end of their life.” The firm found several notable problems, which include a failure of the exterior brick veneer, failing plumbing systems, and ceilings and floors that require replacement. 

POOR ELECTRONIC SECURITY

Additionally, and perhaps most notably, Jericho found that the electronic security system of the jail was inefficiently designed. That system is now being upgraded “at great cost,” according to the presentation made by Hodge. No figure for that great cost was provided in Hodge’s briefing.

FAILED PLUMBING & MOLD

Photos shown during Hodge’s presentation highlighted leaks and water damage inside of the building, with examples of soaking wet, water stained, and missing ceiling tiles.

Moldy showers and living quarters were also shown in the presentation, raising serious concerns for the welfare of detainees held within the facility under the city’s charge. 

Garbage bags were shown to be hanging from the ceiling to collect leaking water as it flowed from the jail’s broken pipes.

SHODDY POWER

Inadequate electrical infrastructure was also highlighted within Hodge’s presentation, as photos showed how staff must run electrical extension cords throughout the corridors of the building to deliver power to staff desks and other workstations. 

SUB-PAR OPERATIONS

In addition to the structural failures found within the building, Jericho also identified several operational failures that require improvement. 

According to Jericho, the design of the inmate housing units could potentially contribute to abuse of the facility by inmates. 

Jericho also found that most support areas within the jail do not follow jailhouse best practices. The design of the jail itself also creates the potential for a dangerous management situation due to unintentional blind spots inherent within the layout.

The firm found that the rise of healthcare and mental health services needed for inmates has far outpaced the current capabilities of the facility. 

According to Hodge, the jail’s approach to dealing with the shortcomings and maintenance issues has been to simply “make due” with what they have. Hodge asserted that the staff have simply not been afforded the conditions needed to enact the “best practices” that other jails are able to. As a result, the safety of both the staff and the inmates suffers.

DANGEROUS CROSS-FLOW

 Jericho reported that the safety of staff and inmates was a particularly-serious problem due to cross-flow in intake- and medically-related areas. The firm reported that due to poor infrastructure, jailhouse equipment is piled up in corridors and other workspaces where they should not be.

As a result of this overcrowding of both people and equipment in spaces that weren’t intended for them, the flow of inmates through the building presents a particularly dangerous situation for staff and inmates alike. 

The firm also found that staff support areas are either highly inadequate or non-existent.

THE FIX: THREE OPTIONS

Jericho has provided three options for how the city might approach fixing the issues at hand. 

Option 1: Minimum Improvements

Option one would be to make improvements to the existing facility at an estimated cost of $102.2 million, which would include: building stabilization renovations to the building’s skin and infrastructure, renovations to 50,000 square feet of the existing building, new construction of an additional 65,000 square feet, and other site improvements. 

Option 2: Phased Replacement

Option two would be a phased replacement approach at an estimated cost of $217.35 million, which would include three phases of total reconstruction over a period of time. 

‍Option 3: New Facility

Option three would be to build an entire new facility at a completely new location. That new facility itself will have a base cost of $196.65 million — but that number does not include the cost of financing or millage. While no locations have currently been explored as potential options, the total cost may increase substantially depending on the cost of land. Hodge touched on this in an additional slide, shown below.

Hodge stated that the city has already explored potential funding sources for each of the options to project final total costs, which include an applied funding rate of 5% to each option to project for interest when calculating millage and tax over time. 

When accounting for financing costs and millage, the total cost to the taxpayers for building a new Muscogee County Jail is projected to be as much as $277.5 million.

ALREADY IN MOTION

The city has already issued requests for proposals from designers and construction managers, the bids of which were due on December 30, 2022. Hodge stated the city has received quite a few responses to those RFPs. 

An additional $3 million has been set aside by the city to perform a series of more in-depth studies to determine the specifics of how to move forward. 

After the preliminary planning is completed and the city manager’s office has a solid recommendation on how to proceed, the decision will come to the desks of city council members to decide how to best steward hundreds of millions of dollars worth of taxpayers’ money throughout the renovation or reconstruction of the city’s jail.

THE PATTERN OF NEGLECT

The need to rebuild the jail at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars also comes as the city plans to rebuild the downtown Government Center building and courthouse.

In what appears to be a pattern of poor planning and fiduciary prioritization, the city’s core infrastructure seems to be failing all at once to the combined tune of nearly a billion dollars in replacement costs. 

While city officials remained focused on expanding the city through new economic development projects, the city’s core infrastructure has apparently suffered irreparable neglect that now costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

How will city officials ensure the proper stewardship of new infrastructure if it has a more-than thirty-year track record of not maintaining its existing portfolio?

Residents may voice their concerns regarding the state of the Muscogee County Jail and the city’s $250 million plan to rebuild it by emailing Mayor Skip Henderson directly at SkipHenderson@columbusga.org, while cc’ing their respective city council members on the email.

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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