By Mandi Remington, Johnson County Supervisor
Johnson County cannot afford to ignore the serious problems with our current jail.
People who are incarcerated deserve safe and humane conditions. The people who work in our detention facilities deserve safe working conditions. And our community deserves a public safety system that is effective, accountable, and built around evidence rather than assumptions.
The question before us is not simply whether we need to do something about our jail. We clearly do. The question is what we should do — and what role a jail designed to last several decades should play in our broader public safety system.
That distinction matters as Johnson County voters consider a $94.5 million bond proposal this November for a new Sheriff’s Office and jail facility, which would cost $124.5 million to repay with interest over a 12-year term. That is a significant commitment for any community, and it deserves careful consideration.
Start with the system, not the building
A jail is one part of a public safety system. It is not the system itself.
Before deciding how large a jail should be — or even whether a new jail is the right solution — we should be asking what problems we are trying to solve and what outcomes we want our public safety system to achieve.
That means looking closely at our actual jail data: who is being detained, why, how long people are staying, what happens after release, and where there are opportunities to further reduce unnecessary reliance on incarceration.
It means considering the potential impact of investments in behavioral health response, diversion, treatment, reentry support, housing, and alternative forms of confinement. It means recognizing that population growth does not automatically translate into an equivalent increase in jail demand. In fact, our reliance on incarceration has declined even as our population has expanded. That success should be part of the assumptions we use when determining what to build.
We should have more than one option
I have been requesting additional options and associated cost information for over a year. Supervisor V Fixmer-Oraiz and I have repeatedly asked for the information we need to evaluate different approaches, but it has not been provided.
We are talking about a $124.5 million commitment for infrastructure that could shape Johnson County’s public safety system for generations. I believe voters deserve to understand all of the choices available to us — not simply be presented with one option and asked whether they want to proceed.
There is a meaningful difference between asking people to comment on a substantially developed proposal and bringing them into the process early enough to help define the problem, establish the goals, and develop and evaluate the possible solutions. I believe Johnson County should have done the latter.
A comprehensive community public safety assessment and planning process should include the people who operate our current system, behavioral health and treatment providers, prosecutors and defense attorneys, victim advocates, housing and reentry organizations, people with lived experience of incarceration, community organizations, and other public safety experts — from the very beginning.
We should examine the options available to us, including what can be accomplished through improving or reconfiguring existing facilities, what different types of detention or confinement models could look like, and what a new facility would need to provide.
Then we should compare those options honestly — including their capital costs, ongoing operating costs, capacity, limitations, human impact, and expected public safety outcomes.
Safe facilities and fewer people in crisis
Johnson County needs to have safe, appropriate facilities for people who are detained. That should include adequate space for programming, treatment, classrooms, and other services.
But I also want us to keep asking why people are entering the system in the first place and what more we can do to prevent unnecessary incarceration.
That is part of why I have led and supported investments in field mediation, behavioral health responses, Criminal Mental Health Court, and other approaches to strengthening the parts of our public safety system that exist outside of a jail cell.
We should be able to hold two ideas at once: people who are detained deserve humane treatment and safe facilities, and we should be working to ensure fewer people are detained in the first place.
Those are not competing goals. They are both part of taking public safety seriously.
What happens next matters
Whatever happens in November, Johnson County still has work to do.
If the bond passes, a comprehensive community public safety assessment and planning process can help us make better decisions about the facility, its scope, its design, and the systems around it.
If it does not, that same process can help us develop a different capital plan based on a more thorough examination of our options.
I am not asking Johnson County to choose between public safety and lawlessness.
I am asking us to recognize that public safety is bigger than a building, and that a $124.5 million commitment deserves more than a single predetermined solution.
We can address the problems with our current jail. We can provide safe conditions for people who need to be detained. We can protect the people who work in our facilities. And we can continue investing in behavioral health, diversion, treatment, reentry, housing, and other strategies that reduce unnecessary incarceration.
We do not have to choose between those goals.
We can do the careful work necessary to determine what Johnson County actually needs — and then build, renovate, redesign, or invest accordingly.
I believe our community is capable of doing that thoughtfully, responsibly, and well.
Mandi Remington is a Johnson County Supervisor, former chair of the University of Iowa Safety and Security Committee, and former chair of the Iowa City Community Police Review Board. She is a member of the Dignity Best Practices National Field Mediation Cohort.
