Weighing in on Hancock County Jail expansion: Residents question panelists

The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan organization that promotes civic participation, held the event in hopes of answering any lingering questions or concerns the public might have before heading to the polls.

The group intentionally picked panel members impartial to the project, said member Donna Steele. They opted not to include anyone on the current jail staff, for example, or those running for office.

Panel members weighed in on many angles of the project from the crimes inmates commit that put them behind bars to whether building a jail in downtown Greenfield is the best investment for the area.

Here’s a snippet of what each panel member had to say.

Richard Culver

The current jail, which has an inmate capacity of 157 inmates, is undersized, Culver said.

Monday, 194 inmates were being held in the jail. Another 51 were being housed at jails in other counties because there’s no space for them in the facility at 123 E. Main St., Culver said.

An overcrowded jail isn’t a problem unique to Hancock County, he said. Inmates in county jails across the state are living in tight quarters, and resources are strained, Culver said.

When deciding whether to support May’s referendum, the public should consider who is in jail and why they’re there — and who shouldn’t be there, Culver said.

Some 66 percent of inmates can be considered substance abusers based on the crimes they’re charged with, though that number is probably much larger, Culver said, referencing a report he gave to county leaders last fall after studying a one-day snapshot of local inmates.

About 85 percent on the day of that study were repeat offenders, meaning they’ve spent time in the county jail in the past. About 30 percent of the jail’s population was serving time. Twenty percent of the population could be held in another county based on where their charges were filed, he added.

The jail’s population rose by about 3.2 percent between 2006 and 2016, he said. The inmate population would grow to about 420 in the next 20 years, based on that rate of growth, he said.

Martha Vail

The county council and board of commissioners are being forced to build a new jail, Vail said. Overcrowding in the current facility is a major crisis, she said, inviting residents to take a tour of the place.

“It will be a an eye-opener … the conditions we expect these inmates to live in,” she said.

Safety of inmates and employees and potential lawsuits loom over county leaders as they try to address the problem, she said.

She urged voters to vote “yes” May 8 and approve the referendum, adding a new law will make the project’s impact on property taxes lower than originally anticipated.

Lawmakers recently passed a measure that would allow counties to increase their income taxes to address overcrowding in county jails.

County leaders already have said they’d like to rely on a combination of an increase in the income tax and property taxes to fund the project and to ensure the project’s impact is shared among all taxpayers, regardless of whether they own property.

Vail suggested the county might not rely on property tax increases alone to fund the entire $55 million (which would raise taxes 0.1436 cents for every $100 of assessed valuation, or $140 for a $100,000 house), which would lessen the increase to property tax bills.

If the referendum doesn’t pass, Vail doesn’t know what Plan B will be, she told the crowd.

While no county leader wants to raise taxes, doing so is necessary to address the problem, she said.

“I don’t know how we can do this major of a program without raising taxes,” she said.

Morton Marcus

Before beginning, Marcus told the crowd he was going to sound as if he is against the project, which isn’t true, he said.

In Indiana, elected officials wait until the last minute to take action, allowing problems to grow until they become a crisis, he said.

As far as he can tell, the criminal justice complex project is a done deal, approved by elected officials, he said.

“The only thing they’re waiting for is your approval. And you can’t say, ‘no.’ You can’t say, ‘no’ because you know it’s a crisis.”

Marcus suggested the jail’s population could decrease in the next five years based on the state’s age demographics, though he didn’t have specifics about the ages of Hancock County’s inmates.

There are more people between the ages of 20 and 24 living in Indiana than the next group, those between the ages of 15 and 19 — a fact backed up by Census data — and that could have an impact on future jail populations, he said.

Does that mean the jail isn’t overcrowded? Not in the least, he said, but maybe the county doesn’t need quite as many jail cells as it has.

He also wondered whether county leaders have considered if it is wise to build the jail downtown, whether that is an appropriate investment for the heart of the city.