Construction is underway for the new Dane County Jail building following years of back-and-forth in the County Board of Supervisors and ballooning costs.
In Wisconsin, local jails make up roughly 34% of the total population behind bars, with Wisconsin’s incarceration rate higher than most developed nations, including the United States overall. Dane County has a much lower incarceration rate than the national average, though its Black incarceration rate is more than twice as high.
Part of the fight to end mass incarceration, according to Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett, is prioritizing rehabilitation through the construction of the larger, more “humane” jail facility.
The building, which will include a new South Tower and the renovated Public Safety Building, will cost over $207 million — making it the most expensive project in county history. Construction of the South Tower began in March 2024 in the old parking lot of the Public Safety Building, and the project is projected to be completed in mid-2027.
As the new jail facility is being constructed, The Daily Cardinal visited the current Dane County Jail and spoke with law enforcement, activists and a formerly incarcerated student about the state of the current building and its expanded future.
South Tower addresses problematic aspects of current jail, Barrett says
One of the main reasons for building the South Tower, Barrett said, is to significantly reduce the “borderline unconstitutional” use of solitary confinement cells in the current jail. Inmates going through mental health crises or those with airborne diseases such as COVID-19 will have a floor dedicated to their needs in the new facility, he said.
“We [currently] put people that are going through a mental health crisis in solitary confinement because there's no place else to put them. It’s the worst place to send people,” Barrett told the Cardinal.
Barrett said he is also working with Tellurian Behavioral Health and American Family Insurance to build another facility designed specifically for people with mental health struggles who need assistance that is not “jail, detox or a mental health facility.”
Though the Dane County Jail spends $7 million on its medical contract and has full-time medical and mental health staff, according to Barrett. Its current medical examination room is an all-beige converted former closet with a curtain, toilet and a hard frame for a bed.
“The jail was built in a time where the predominant thought was ‘lock them up and throw away the key.’ We can do better,” Barrett said.
The new jail’s South Tower will have a mezzanine for social activities, a classroom in every housing unit and an improved medical and mental health wing for women, who Barrett said were sent to the “oldest, worst part of the [current] jail.”
But the renovations will not come without setbacks. The South Tower will no longer have the room which hosts Dane County Jail’s Parenting Inside Out program, which Barrett said is because the county board decided against it due to costs.
“The county expects us to work on rehabilitation and help people, but we have to have resources to do that, or else we’re just trying to survive,” Sheriff Barrett said. “They're not being effective: they're just being efficient.”
Disagreement on space, budgeting
The approval of the South Tower plans follows years of negotiations. City officials, the sheriff’s office and activists agree that areas of the City-County Building are unsafe and need to be replaced — their disagreements arise from just how big the new building should be.
“If we can have a smaller jail with smaller staff, it means less money for that staffing. And that's money that could be used for community based … treatments and supports,” Paul Saemann, a co-lead of MOSES’s Justice System Reform Initiative Task Force, told the Cardinal.
The Black Caucus, a group of county board members who have been advised by MOSES, have advocated to “[right-size] the jail.”
The Black Caucus used their collective voting power to grant approval of the new facility contingent on the implementation of reforms that would help to reduce the number of people incarcerated. They hope “a facility with 100 fewer beds than previously planned will meet Dane County’s current and future needs.”
But Barrett said a smaller jail may mean a reduced ability to provide the same services that stakeholders advocate for. Most of the jail’s budget consists of fixed expenses like salaries, medical contracts and furnishings, he said, which are mandated by law.
“So what's left? Extra things that we do to make these better?” Barrett said.
The new jail’s original plans included construction of a full kitchen that would host culinary classes, giving inmates experience that would help them secure jobs in the food service industry, Barrett said, “but the Dane County Board took that out.”
“In order to have appropriate change, we got to pay for it,” he said. “It takes money in order to get the results.”
Formerly incarcerated UW-Madison student speaks out
Thomas, a current UW-Madison student formerly incarcerated at the Dane County Jail who did not provide his full name for legal reasons, had mixed feelings on his experience. He described the process of being taken into custody and searched as “kind of respectful” even though his overall stay was “stressful.”
“There were a lot of smaller things that were really, really bad that I had to try hard to pull through,” Thomas told the Cardinal.
Thomas said he could not sleep his first night in the jail because his bed had semen stains all over it. He also said he did not shower throughout his stay because “no one bothered to clean it” and because one of his fellow inmates was a pedophile.
“It was weird and scary,” Thomas said. “I didn’t bring anything up to the officers because I would rarely see them, let alone know if they would actually help.”
Thomas was let go from jail after less than a week’s stay. To this day, he gets “very uncomfortable” around Madison police, who he believes have an “extreme power that they really don’t deserve to have.”
But after intensive therapy and reflection, Thomas said he has mostly recovered from his Dane County Jail experience. He said being incarcerated “gave [him] a lot of reasons to keep moving forward” in his life.
“It teaches you to strive as hard as you can,” he said. “You know that right now, you could be inside of jail and wasting very, very valuable time.”
Sreejita Patra is a senior staff writer and the former summer ad sales manager for The Daily Cardinal. She has written for breaking news, campus news and arts. She also covered the Oregon Village Board for the Oregon Observer.
