By Barbara Brown

A new jail or justice center could be more than two years away, but a task force of law enforcement, judges, citizens and county government officials are working now with a consulting firm to organize the process.

During a lunchtime meeting Thursday, Aug. 12 at the Chisago County Government Center, the task force met Dennis Liebert of Liebert and Associates and David Bennett, a partner in the planning process.

Liebert is a correctional planning, design and training professional and Bennett is experienced in jail management and planning focusing on overcrowding issues like the one facing Chisago County.

The team has worked together on several justice center and jail projects all over the country. They are working in conjunction with architectural firm KKE on the jail project.

Hopes for a new jail in Chisago County are not new. When Sheriff Todd Rivard was running for the post in 2002, he said he would work hard to improve the living space and work space in the jail.

Those plans may be coming closer to become reality.

Bennett and Liebert are gathering a lot of information from the sheriffís office and jail computer databases to examine what exactly are the needs of Chisago County.

They will develop a master plan based on that information and meetings with the sheriffís office and government officials.

A feasibility plan will be done and programming like the function of the jail and how to staff it will be addressed.

Site selection is the second step in the process, Liebert said. He said most often site selection can be the toughest part. He said in his experiences, the top two location preferences for a jail are either in the parking lot of the current facility or next to a landfill. In the case of Chisago County neither option would be feasible, so the task force will have to work with the public, Center City council and Chisago County officials to develop a location.

Thirdly, the planners will develop a schematic design of the jail along with deciding where to locate locks, doors, cameras and additional options like whether parts of the jail would be carpeted.

Up to one year can pass for the first three steps to be completed, Liebert said. Then the county will go out for bids on the project and could spend up to two years building.

The final step in the process involves transition from the old jail to the new one, occupancy and operations.

Currently, Bennett is tabulating a wide variety of information which will be condensed to give the task force a good idea of where the county stands now and what will be needed to address future needs. Some of the information being collected includes detailed statistics of the kinds of people in the jail now, population growth and forecasts, how many people and what kinds of crimes are addressed in the current criminal justice system.

The county is in line to spend about $750,000 this year on housing Chisago County inmates in jails in other counties because the current county jail is over capacity, according to County Administrator John Moosey.

ìWe donít simply want to build jail beds,î Bennett said. ìWe want to analyze your criminal justice system; analyze what money needs to go to jail beds and what money needs to go toward other types of sanctions,î he added.

Bennett has five years of data that is being tabulated now. He gave some examples of the early results of trend analysis for Chisago County.

Bookings have increased from 1,718 in 1999 to 2,150 in 2003, up 25 percent. The average length of stay in the jail in 1999 was 9.1 days with a peak in of 10.6 days in 2002 but stabilizing at 9.5 days in 2003.

The average daily population of the jail in 1999 was 42. In 2002 that number increased by 31 percent to 59 and last year was at 56. The increase was due to a number of factors including the infiltration of the county by methamphetamine and increased police presence and arrest rate in the county.

During the five years between 1999 and 2003, Chisago Countyís population increased 14 percent from 40,453 to 46,165.

According to those numbers, 12 percent of every 10,000 population in Chisago County has been incarcerated. The countyís rate is about half of the rate in the United States and about one-third of the midwest region rate.

While most of the discussion during the meeting centered on how the planning process for a new jail would run, County Commissioner Rick Olseen said he was interested in hearing more about a justice center which would be one building to house the jail, Chisago County Sheriffís Office and the courts.

Others at the meeting agreed that they would like to see plans for a justice center as well.

For Liebert and Bennett to look at the possibility of designing and building a justice center, the pair would need an official expansion of the scope of their duties.

Commissioner Bob Gustafson said he would present the idea to the whole board at its next meeting.

An October symposium is planned for the task force to examine the results of data collection to that point and receive information on the progress of the planning process.

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