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Instead of a leaky ceiling, the basement floods regularly. Electrical equipment is stored in potentially unfavorable conditions, and the main room where radios and Tasers are stored in a room susceptible to pooling water, Capt. Curtis Fell of the Rock County Sheriff’s Office told the 69����.

“That (room) floods frequently with quite a bit of water in there; there’s no other place to keep them,” Fell said of the equipment.

Meanwhile, as the department has grown, space for conference meetings and training sessions has become hard to schedule.

Thursday night, county supervisors will consider a resolution to spend $96 million on the Rock County Sheriff’s Office’s plan to overhaul its jail and law enforcement services facilities with a nearly 200,000-square-foot complex. The price tag is significantly lower than the initial $116 million estimate in 2021, and funding for the project would be phased over the next three years ending in 2024.

If approved by the board, the new Rock County Jail complex will be equipped with the sheriff’s office, a new jail, law enforcement services and other services aimed at meeting needs of both staff and the jail population.

Chief deputy Craig Strouse said the design for the jail was influenced by multiple meetings and tours of jail facilities throughout the United States. During those tours, which included jails in Oregon, Idaho and Colorado, Strouse borrowed ideas and concepts from the departments such as wellness and medical centers.

“If I go someplace, I want to see their building,” Strouse said. “If we can steal the best ideas to bring them back home, we’re all in.”

While much of the focus on the project is replacing the jail, Strouse said the project’s scope goes deeper than that. The new complex would include more dedicated spaces to address mental health issues, substance-abuse rehabilitation programs and indoor-outdoor spaces to enable more inmates to “get some fresh air,” as he put it.

One such addition includes the first outdoor recreation center to be built in any of Janesville’s corrections departments. This space will accommodate 35-40 inmates and include a basketball court and outdoor workout equipment.

Another priority on the facility list is consolidating the off-site buildings to reduce travel time for the staff and improve response times in emergencies. Some of the locations Fell oversees require a drive across Highway 14.

With the spaces housed in one location, Fell said, problem-solving and emergency responses will be “100%” more efficient. Currently, if an incident occurs among inmates, officers would have to leave the adjoining administrative area and go up the two or three stories to get to the source of the problem.

“When you’re fighting with somebody, a couple minutes can be a long time,” he said.

That’s part of the overall goal of consolidating the facilities and making the operation more efficient.

“We learned in this building that we didn’t have enough space and that’s why we ended up having to branch out,” Fell said.

Mental health services

Recidivism rates are a concern for Strouse, as he said troubled individuals put a strain on the local hospital and treatment centers, in addition to homeless shelters.

By including more dedicated areas for medical and mental health treatment, people among the population would be better served, he said.

To achieve this, existing services such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous would expand and improvements to suicide watch pods would allow for more observation by staff. Strouse has also noticed a rise in special needs among the jail population, a group he suggested is underserved.

“We’re doing the right things for society,” he said. “They need to be able to come in and go out easy, and that’ll be easy for releases.”

Time-saving for staff

One of the additions both Fell and Strouse see as imperative to keeping operations going smoothly is the construction of an enclosed garage.

As it stands, officers and other staff on site are limited in parking options. And between the harsh weather and in-vehicle technology, getting officers up and running can be a lengthy ordeal.

Another issue to be addressed is the cumbersome nature of the five-story Pinehurst building. The new jail complex will consist of one-story facilities, another element Strouse said will save his jailers time by not climbing stairs or relying on an elevator that breaks down often.

“You save a jailer 10 seconds, that’s huge,” Strouse said. “You put them 10 seconds behind, they’re never gonna catch up.”

Timeline for construction

Construction of the new building is expected to commence in the summer, with the Pinehurst building remaining intact until the new jail is constructed.

Once everything is in place, Pinehurst will torn down and inmates will be moved to the new corrections facility. The project is expected to be completed by 2024.

The nearly $100 million in funds is proposed to be allocated over three years, with $23 million this year to get the project started with infrastructure.

Move-in is scheduled in the early part of 2024, with some punch-list items and outdoor amenities to follow, as well as demolition and removal of the older building in the spring and summer.