The Pima County commission formed to study the need and feasibility of building a new jail has released its final report — recommending hiring a consultant for evaluating how best to invest taxpayer dollars, as well as an option for a new facility priced at more than $800 million.
While the report doesn’t offer a conclusive answer as to whether or not a new Pima County Adult Detention Center Complex should be built, it does present a number of recommendations. In a concluding section of the report — 269 pages, including its appendices — commission members state that they “agree something must be done to relieve the strain of current conditions to prevent a crisis but have differing ideas for arriving at solutions.”
Beginning their list of final recommendations in a report nearly a year in the making is the simple observation: “Jail facility improvements are necessary.”
But what exactly those improvements are and how they should be funded is left unanswered. Instead, the commission recommends that the county “proceed with efforts to contract a consultant to provide expert professional services” to evaluate the building, define options for remediation, price out those options, consider the impact of those options, plan how the future of the jail will meet its purpose, and make recommendations as how to proceed.
The final recommendations echo the original charter of the Adult Detention Center Blue Ribbon Commission, which was “to assess the need for a new Pima County Adult Detention Center or improvements, as well as funding options.” The report was delivered to County Administrator Jan Lesher on Jan. 31 and released to the media on Feb. 5.
The commission met six times, though one meeting was adjourned within minutes when community members protesting a new jail entered playing music. The commission’s website only went live with information about the public meetings the day before their third meeting.
At least eight people died in the Pima County jail in 2023, according to the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner. At least 10 more people died within 30 days of being released from the jail last year. Arizona Luminaria has extensively investigated the rising deaths and dangers at the jail, revealing consistent complaints about jail conditions and, in particular, delays and other shortcomings of medical care.
The commission’s report included four final options for the county, two of which were deemed unfeasible. The two feasible options are renovating the main part of the jail and constructing a new 1,132-bed housing unit for the price of $623 million; or building an entirely new 3,162-bed jail for the price of $858 million.
The number of people held in the jail on Feb. 5 was 1,697, according to Corrections Bureau Chief Scott Lowing. The total number of beds available in the jail is 2,030.
The complex comprises three housing structures, a west and east facility, as well as a central tower. The tower is the original jail facility opened in 1984.
The costliest option – building an entirely new jail – included risks such as “locating suitable properties,” “archaeological issues,” and building the jail within view of the national historic site of Tumamoc Hill, according to the report. But it also was considered by the commission to be the “best option for long-term benefit of capital investment.”
Both of the final and feasible recommendations would result in a jail with more than 1,000 new beds.
According to the final report, the number of available beds will be a problem soon: “We estimate that the jail population will exceed design capacity by 2029.”
That echoes comments made by Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos when, in Dec. 2022 letter to the Pima County Board of Supervisors, he originally called for the new jail: “While we would all like to see fewer inmates in our jail, the reality of law enforcement and the inclination of the courts and probation do not signal a reduction.”
That problem will be exacerbated by any construction or renovations, as, according to the report, complex building rehabilitation “will require closure of entire buildings during construction.” Those closures will require the relocation of the jail population during construction, but, as the report notes, “the county does not have surplus jail space adequate to meet this need.”
For the renovation option, the report says people held in the jail could be temporarily held in nearby county-owned facilities.
The commission offers four ways for the board of supervisors to raise the funds: General Sales Tax, primary property tax, Jail District Excise Tax or General Obligation Bond election. The first two could be implemented by the county supervisors without public approval, the second two would have to be OK’d by voters.
The report also recommends: “Avoid taxation without representation. The Pima County community has demonstrated numerous times in the past its capacity to thoughtfully review GO bond proposals put forward to improve County facilities.”
“The volume of public input received indicates a desire and expectation of the community to be engaged in this matter,” according to the report.
Not quite a crisis
While the final report acknowledged that the jail is in poor shape, commission members do not see its state as being at crisis levels, as Nanos alleged when he wrote in a Dec. 5, 2022 letter that the jail was in a “full-blown crisis.”
Commission members write in the report, “Insufficient evidence was presented to characterize the current situation as a ‘crisis’ as Sheriff Nanos has described it.”
An Arizona Luminaria reporter toured the jail in January, seeing some of the crumbling infrastructure Nanos and others have described, including leaking pipes, dripping ceilings, filthy walls, as well as poorly designed features — such as a medical unit with cells hard to view from the guard or nurses’ station.
The detox unit — where all people held in the jail spend at least their first few days unless they have a separate medical or mental health condition — was comprised of cells with 10 people, at the time of the tour, lined up on mattresses on the floor. A television was playing silently in the corners, and a few men watched on while others sprawled under their blankets. Many of them, according to jail staff, suffer through withdrawal in those conditions. Jail staff also commented that the smell inside the detox unit — almost noxiously scented by chemical cleaners — was better than usual.
Chief Lowing said the jail wasn’t designed for a population with high percentages of people dealing with mental health crises or suffering the effects of fentanyl or other substance-use disorders.
“If we don’t do it now, we’re going to get sued,” Lowing said of the need for a new facility. “If we don’t build it now, costs will just increase.”
According to court records reviewed by Arizona Luminaria, plaintiffs have brought at least 40 federal and state lawsuits involving the jail since 2021, alleging a range of abuses, from problems with access to mail to ignored medical and health conditions. Most of the suits were dismissed on technical grounds.
Among the active filings, at least five lawsuits focus on the deaths of incarcerated people. A ruling in one of the suits may open up an unprecedented view into policies at the jail.
The commission’s report also noted that, under Nanos, “expenditures for repair and maintenance have been increasing.”
Previous to the Nanos administration, expenditures averaged $500,000 per year. Under Nanos, in fiscal year 2021, the department spent $957,000 and approximately $3.07 million in fiscal year 2022, according to the report.
The commission didn’t seem convinced an entirely new jail was necessary, but neither did they see renovations as sufficient. Most of the buildings’ problems, “cannot be corrected with simple renovations,” they write.
They also note, “The design of the healthcare, mental health and detoxification units are obsolete. They need to be expanded and reimagined.”
In the end, the commission concluded, “Some amount of new construction will be necessary to support a growing population and/or displacement of inmates to allow for rehabilitation of current facilities.”
In their executive summary, the commission acknowledged that their “scope was limited to evaluating the condition of the jail itself,” however, it became “immediately apparent” that they almost must address “coexisting societal problems surrounding confinement.” And that the problems visible at the jail must be “addressed in a more global fashion through future community wide efforts.”
The commission does not articulate what those community-wide efforts should be. But the community stakeholders — at public meetings, protests, and rallies over the past year — have been vociferously critical of building a new jail.
“The Commission strongly supports a more comprehensive discussion that involves the larger justice system and its stakeholders in a subsequent phase as the County continues to evaluate the PCADC and its needs.”
When the commission quickly adjourned a meeting in August, Stephanie Madero-Piña, a member of No Jail Deaths whose husband and nephew died in the jail, said, “These are my family members you’re walking away from. You turn your back on us? Fine. We’ll speak for you, dammit.”
The Pima County Board of Supervisors is set to discuss the blue ribbon commission’s final report at its regular meeting on Feb. 20.
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