While some students may say school is comparable to jail, Delaware County is looking to turn a local middle school into the new county jail.
Wilson Middle School shut down in June of 2014 after they merged with Southside, but the remaining building may begin to house lawbreakers instead of students if the plan follows through.
County commissioners said space is a major issue with the current county jail and Wilson Middle School could be the answer. The 219,000-square-foot school sits on 51 acres.
“The jail we have now you can’t build up,” said Delaware County Commissioner James King. “You can’t build out. I don’t know why anybody would build a triangle jail in the first place.”
The county jail currently holds around 300 inmates, but it was only built to house around 120. King said with the new jail location, Muncie could house up to 500 beds; which could save taxpayers up to $500,000 that is usually spent on sending inmates out of county.
Mike Brown, Ball State University criminal justice professor, said overcrowding within the jails encourages innovations such as pretrial programs can help keep a large amount of citizens out of jail.
Pretrial programs allow those who aren’t dangerous to remain in the community and continue to work, support their families and pay taxes. If they are incarcerated, they are no longer paying taxes and supporting their families. Brown said because of this there are several factors to determine if it is best to expand.
“The research shows if you’ve got empty beds the courts will use them and that is an important consideration, so expenses can actually increase because there are jail beds to fill,” Brown said.
King said there are still a lot of steps that need to be taken in order to move forward with this project. The county commissioner doesn’t see the project being completed within the next two years, but said with all the drug issues in the county, they need to start looking to build this facility now.
“It’s something that needs to be done,” King said. “I’ve always been told by several politicians that if you ever bring up the jail you won’t get re-elected. Well, I didn’t get into this line of work to worry about that. I will do what is right and what needs to be done. If it costs me an election, then so be it. ”
King aims to involve all justice departments in this project. Because of all the limited space downtown, King said he has plans to move more than just the county jail over to the middle school.
“Not only can we put the jail there, you can put the courts there, the prosecutor’s office there, anything to do with our justice system can actually go out there at Wilson, where you can just have one area,” King said.
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