The cost of the jail is estimated at $61 million. The county is paying for the jail with a combination of sources, including a $15 million state grant, $30 million from sales tax-funded bonds, $10 million from American Rescue Plan Act funds and $20 million from the county’s general fund.
Inmates from the old jail will be moved to the new jail starting the second week of December, Greene County Sheriff Scott Anger said Wednesday.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
“I still stand before you confidently, that this facility will serve the citizens of Greene County for the next 50 years and into perpetuity,” Anger said.
Between the new jail, the county’s Adult Detention Center, which is for minor offenses, and mental health treatment, the county is up to 508 beds.
“Today we stand before a modern, safe, and functional facility that has 287 much-needed beds,” Commissioner Dick Gould said. “With this expansion, our corrections officers can work in cleaner, safer conditions, and when our courts impose sentences, individuals will now be required to serve their full sentences.”
Previously, some convicted criminals could not be held due to the conditions of the old jail. The old jail was built in 1969, has been under a federal consent decree since 1989.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
The corrections center is named after Gene Fischer, the longtime Greene County Sheriff who served in the position from June of 2003 until his unexpected passing on Nov. 16, 2021. With a nearly 40-year career in law enforcement, realizing a new county jail was much of Fischer’s work before his death.
“He took his job seriously, but he didn’t take himself seriously, which everybody really liked about Gene,” Anger said. “For me personally, he was a friend, a peer, a big brother, a mentor.”
The new jail will have space for mental health programming, as well as medical and dental facilities, and the adjoining Sheriff’s Office houses the coroner’s office, sheriff’s administration, patrol and investigative units, concealed carry weapon (CCW) licensing, background checks and other functions. Greene County has also become part of the Stepping Up program by the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health, aimed at reducing the number of mental health patients in Ohio jails.
“In the day and age that we live in and anybody in law enforcement can tell us…that the people that go into the jail many times have mental health problems, behavioral health problems, many times they have drug addiction problems, many times they have both of those problems. And this is going to make it much, much easier for the services…to be delivered,” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
The new jail was designed by Wachtel and McAnally, a firm that has designed more than a third of Ohio’s correctional facilities, including the one in Warren County, and built by Danis-Granger Construction.
There is no set date yet for when a federal judge would lift the consent decree, Anger said, but with the new jail built, the county is ready to make that consent decree “a thing of the past.”
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