image courtesy of vladimirs prusakovs / dreamstime
Paint and polish can only gloss over the problems of the Shelby County Jail, which is housed in an antiquated building unfit for its present use.
That’s what I wrote for a front-page story in the Memphis Press-Scimitar on July 19, 1975. It summed up my almost-three-hour, unannounced tour of every floor and cell block in the old Shelby County Jail at 150 Washington Avenue.
The conditions of the jail were unsurprising. They had been described in a two-week federal court trial, and the facility’s squalor and oppressive atmosphere suggested the trial testimony was an understatement.
The 1975 article’s opening sentence remains accurate today in describing the Shelby County Jail. Despite persistent calls for improvements and highly critical inspections since at least 2017, the jail at 201 Poplar remains a building unfit for its present use.
The Criminal Justice Center, which includes the county jail and various courts, opened in June 21, 1977, at a cost of $58 million. That’s the equivalent of $310 million today; however, today’s projected cost for a replacement, called the “worst case” by the sheriff’s department, is a staggering $1.4 billion.
image courtesy of alain lacroix / dreamstime
The jail was built for 2,400 men inmates and its daily population was already edging toward 3,000, even before bookings from the federal agencies’ saturation campaign in Memphis were added this fall. It means the overcrowded Shelby County Jail now houses more people than prison systems in nine states.
The impact of the demanding 24/7 operation and neglectful maintenance are obvious: The building is functionally obsolete, plagued by mechanical failures, broken elevators, leaky ceilings, and outdated security systems. Its flawed design — by an architect who had never designed a jail — and the present conditions defy retrofitting it to twenty-first-century safety, health, and accessibility standards.
What is needed now is a twenty-first-century jail rather than a twentieth-century warehouse.
So far, the only general consensus is that a new jail is needed. There is less discussion about how the design must integrate better medical and mental health units, GED classrooms, job training, better family visitation areas, and new technology capable of preventing administration errors, speeding up bookings, and reducing court delays.
Building a new jail, while it is the right decision, is not the first or only requirement for progress. The most immediate and pressing need is to change the jail’s culture. The process of creating political consensus, deciding on a new location, developing the funding plan, and constructing a new facility will take five to 10 years.
As legendary management consultant Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” In other words, the positive impact of a new jail will be undercut unless the jail culture — its collective attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors — is not corrected.
Sheriff’s department officials deliver justifications and often throw up their hands as if cultural change is beyond the realm of possibility; however, it’s been done before. Mark Luttrell did it.
When Luttrell was elected sheriff in 2002, he inherited a federal class-action lawsuit that had produced scathing rulings by judges, appointment of a special master to oversee jail operations, and even a threat by the federal government to intervene. By 2005, the federal judge removed the contempt ruling and praised Luttrell’s 14-point plan to improve the culture and operations.
Since the election in 2018 of Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr., the facility has declined starkly, with some officials identifying the problems there as human-rights issues. After all, it is arguably the deadliest jail in the U.S. Since 2019, 65 inmates have died there, including four in just one week earlier this year. Meanwhile, the average wait time for bookings is roughly 60 to 72 hours, and jail overcrowding contributes to the likelihood of nonviolent defendants returning to the community and reoffending.
So far, the political back-and-forth has been about the location of a new jail rather than about reimagining how it can better reflect values like safety and respect for human dignity — and how it can better contribute to fighting crime. The decision isn’t just about expanding incarceration, but about acting on the commitment to replace a facility unfit for human beings.
So far, the only general consensus is that a new jail is needed. There is less discussion about how the design must integrate better medical and mental health units, GED classrooms, job training, better family visitation areas, and new technology capable of preventing administration errors, speeding up bookings, and reducing court delays.
Three hard realities face county government: 1) If a new jail is merely a monument to incarceration and keeps the same culture, the risk is that it replicates the same harm on a larger scale; 2) Location matters politically and culturally, and putting a large-scale facility in neighborhoods already dealing with disinvestment can’t be the answer; and 3) The fiscal math is brutal. If the cost of $1.4 billion is borne by county government, annual bond payments could be $100 million a year, the equivalent of 44 cents in property taxes.
Already, a plan by a commercial real estate executive for a campus on the former Firestone plant went down in flames when the New Chicago neighborhood rose up in opposition, citing the lack of community input from the very community that would be impacted.
Alternate locations will be hard to find, especially considering two equally bad ideas have surfaced: building a new jail next to Shelby Farms Park, or expanding the existing downtown jail. At the Shelby Farms-adjacent property, a jail would inject police sirens, traffic snarls, and more into our community’s largest locally owned park. At the downtown site, expanding the jail defies logic. Its monolithic fortress architecture and the razor-wired employee parking lot are visual blights on downtown, and expanding a jail with as many serious deficiencies as this one is an invitation for class-action lawsuits.
The answer should be a more smartly designed jail that reduces violence, emphasizes mental health and crisis response units, upgrades technology, improves working conditions and training, transforms jail culture, upholds safety and humanity, and restores credibility to an institution that has lost the public’s confidence. But where?
Tom Jones is the principal of Smart City Consulting, which specializes in strategic communications, public policy development, and strategic planning. He tends the 20-year-old Smart City Memphis blog and is an author with experience in local government. He can be reached at tjones@smartcityconsulting.com
