Public raises concerns about new jail location

“I don’t need her walking past some sex-starved criminals”

After scraping away some of the surface concerns the public has raised about the construction of a new county jail, like cost and the actual need, the county’s decision makers heard clearly from the people who will get some shady neighbors moving in next door.

The proposed jail site is in a growing neighborhood and next to the County fairgrounds.
“It’s clear that you need a new jail and you’ve been working with so little for so long,” said Gunnison resident Chris Bergman at a public hearing on Wednesday, April 21. “My question is, why are you putting the jail here? I live in the neighborhood and I’m just looking out for the safety of everybody in the neighborhood.”
Up to that point, Gunnison County Sheriff Rick Murdie had painted a picture of the county in dire need of a jail, saying the current facility was inadequate when it was built and over time, conditions had only gotten worse.
Murdie has seen assaults on inmates and officers that resulted from cramped conditions and outdated cells. At least one assault at the jail was committed by an inmate, against an officer, who made it over the jail walls before being recaptured in the parking lot.
“We do have some pretty bad individuals in Gunnison County, like it or not,” Murdie told the crowd.
And the bad ones are stacking up these days. Even though the jail’s only maximum-security cell is occupied—and has been for as long as Murdie can remember for the past three decades—the county jail received another inmate requiring maximum security at the end of last week and expected a third to arrive this week.
“I don’t know where I’m going to put him,” Murdie said. “We’ll let one individual have four or five beds, because we can’t put him in with somebody else.”
The displaced inmates might find themselves sleeping and eating on the floor. That kind of separation is required by law and covers the rest of the population as well. Men cannot be housed with women, and misdemeanor criminals cannot be mixed with felons. And people waiting for sentencing cannot be mixed with anyone.
Murdie told the audience that when the jail was originally opened in 1980 there were only 18 beds. Now the jail has 47 beds; Murdie said he had seen every bed with a inmate in it.
One of the sheriff’s biggest fears, he said, has been a federal lawsuit based on a civil rights violation for cruel and unusual punishment.
Such a suit could lead the federal court to build a jail to specifications without much thought given to public input or cost, Murdie said. But it isn’t just about the money or control over the project. It’s about believing that everyone deserves safe and respectable treatment, said Sheriff Rick Murdie.
“If there is a violation to that individual’s constitutional rights it makes no difference who he is, what he is or what he’s done, somebody needs to stand up for him,” Murdie said. “We violate people’s constitutional rights every day in the Gunnison County jail and we need to change that.”
But hearing about felons in need of maximum security and programs that put potential criminals out onto the street had Bergman wondering about the right his family has to walk down the street without worrying about who’s watching.
“And do the 900 or so people annually who come through the jail—do they just get taken home, do they get a ride? Do they walk down my street? I’m just thinking that this isn’t quite the neighborhood to be releasing prisoners out onto the street.”
Other neighbors were concerned with the look of the Detention Center and the effect it would have on property values. Gunnison real estate agent Mindy Costanzo said she has had to reduce the price of a neighboring property twice with a sale, and she blamed the location of the jail.
Roy Blythe, the project’s principal architect, and Andy Cupples, a designer with the nationally renowned jail construction firm AECOM, had a poster board with pictures of a jail the firm had built in Tahoe and another in Kentucky horse country. And over doubts that such regal looking jails would be coming to Gunnison, Blythe and Cupples told the audience they would do the best with what they had.
 “We are extremely aware of the developing residential block here to be sensitive to,” Cupples said. “We are also extremely aware of how important the fairgrounds are to the county and the Cattlemen’s Days and what goes on here.”
So the team has proposed a building site at the back of the lot that will put parking near the fairgrounds and allow for plenty of room for landscaping. The building itself, Cupples said, will be “very compact” at about 35,000 square feet.
The building’s appearance and interface with the community is only half of what Cupples and his team will look at when designing the facility. The other half is how the jail operates from the inside; that is what will keep the inmates separated from the neighborhood.
Even though the average population size at the jail has been fewer than 30 inmates lately, Cupples says, there are a greater number of people moving through the jail “because the county has a good bond and release program, leaving jail beds for people who need to be in jail—not people that could otherwise be released prior to trial.”
So, he says, the design team is considering “opening the jail at a capacity of roughly 52 beds, which is just slightly over our peak but gets us to a place in our peak that we can operate.”
By moving inmates around and double-bunking where necessary, the jail, in concept, could expand to accommodate 78 beds without risking the safety of the people on either side of the bars. If pushed, Cupples said, the jail could hold 92.
The design of the building will probably also allow for an addition if needed. And the key will be having the facility designed so no windows look out on the street and any outdoor space is situated like a courtyard, surrounded by walls.
Bergman asked the designers to pay close attention to those details that would separate the inmates from the public. He told them the community was relying on the designers to make the best use of their knowledge and expertise to keep the community safe, with a reminder that the jail is bigger than the building it occupies.
“I’m relying on you. We can’t come up with all of the good ideas… Criminals don’t stop being criminals once they walk out onto the street,” Bergman said. “My kid walks home by here from 4-H two times a week. I don’t need her walking past some sex-starved criminals that are out in the yard, or anything like that.”
The public will have another chance to offer input and points of view at a second public hearing on the jail construction project on May 18.