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A look inside the finished county jail addition
Crawford County Jail Master Control
A look at the master control room, which needs to be staffed 24/7 when inmates are in the facility. A jailer in Master Control can monitor the entire building with the use of dozens of cameras. The room is also at a higher vantage point to provide a way to visually see into the inmate areas. Underneath the room is a complex series of wires and electronic equipment. Jail Administrator Russell Wittrig said there was approximately 25 miles of conduit wiring used in the new addition. The jail requires specialty equipment (called “detention grade”) for everything from furniture to security equipment to the panels on the ceiling. - photo by Steve Van Kooten

Crawford County’s three-year journey to build a new jail is expected to come to a close later this year. The jail addition has been completed, and the remodel of the existing sheriff’s office and original jail is now well underway.

At the April 21 meeting of the board of supervisors, Greg Callin presented another update on the construction side of the project. Callin is the vice president of client services for Kraemer Brothers, which acts as the county’s construction manager on the jail and law enforcement center.

Crawford County Jail Addition 1
A small jail pod with a commons area and cells arranged with a mezzanine. The jail is required by the State to provide sources of natural light for the inmates. County jails are required to have components that are specifically designed for use in a correctional setting. This includes major parts like doors and locks to less obvious items like ceiling panels and chairs. - photo by Steve Van Kooten

The project’s cost, schedule and safety standards have been met thus far, and Callin said, “I think we’re in a strong position to finish in what we call a win-win scenario in terms of being ahead of budget and schedule as we finish up.”

Construction began 18 months ago. Callin estimated the construction work will reach completion on July 10.

He added that the state inspector is satisfied with the facility, which is a major hurdle Kraemer and the County had to clear to get their new jail up and running.

In the former jail and sheriff’s office, work on the basement and ground floor is almost finished. Callin also noted that the department’s staff are using the first floor while the second floor gets remodeled.

The inmate transition to the new facility is aimed for later this month. The County has placed their current roster of inmates in other jails (primarily Grant County) while staff training takes place, according to Jail Administrator Russell Wittrig.

“The inmates are in Grant County due to the training because it would be very difficult to keep them here and have the staff take care of them and train at the same time,” he said.

Crawford County Sheriff Dale McCullick added that the ongoing construction in the law enforcement building is another reason the inmates were temporarily relocated.

Wittrig also noted that the jail is built to last, with almost all of the building’s components meeting “detention-grade” specifications, which are mandatory standards for everything from equipment to furnishing to the locks on the doors and the tiles used in the ceiling. “Everything in there is probably double or triple the cost compared to what they would use in any other building.”

Even though the finish line is on the horizon, there are still several benchmarks for the contractors and subcontractors to meet before mid-summer: landscaping and seeding will be finishing up sometime this month, Kraemer Brothers plans to have construction trailers removed from the property by June 8 and work on the new veteran’s memorial is supposed to commence by June 15.

Crawford County Jail Addition 2
An example of one of the new jail cells in the addition. The DOC requires jails to have facilities appropriate for inmates of different classifications, including biological sex and severity of risk to themselves and others. Another requirement is that the inmates can access the courthouse without leaving the building. Crawford County had a skywalk installed that goes from the second floor of the jail facility to the sheriff’s office, which is attached to the courthouse. Inmates can be transported from holding areas by use of an elevator to get to the skywalk. - photo by Steve Van Kooten

Staffing

It’s no secret that the jail has a large price tag, but McCullick said the County needed to invest in a new facility for several reasons.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) reportedly expressed doubt that the county could’ve continued to house inmates in the old jail. If the State determined that Crawford County didn’t have an acceptable corrections facility, the County may have been required to house inmates in other counties.

McCullick pointed out that the cost of housing inmates in other places can be a hefty expense. Other counties in southern Wisconsin have reportedly spent more than $500,000 on shipping overflow inmates to other county jails, and Wittrig said Monroe County was reportedly spending approximately $1.5 million per year for that purpose before they built a new jail.

While the updated jail will save the county from spending money to house and transport inmates elsewhere, it has resulted in other expenses, such as an increased payroll for the sheriff’s department.

The new addition will have three jailers on staff at all times: one will be stationed in the facility’s master control, another at a second monitoring station and one that goes between the two areas. One of the DOC requirements is that a staff person must be in the master control at all times.

According to the sheriff, the old facility only had two jailers on shift at one time. The additional staff person is the one who runs the building’s master control, which is a monitoring station that can view the entire facility through the use of security cameras. That person is not allowed to leave their area.

“They run every door, so the jailers don’t have to come and open everything,” said McCullick. “Master control runs everything; if we have to come from [the Law Enforcement Center] to go over there to help, master control is who is going to let us in.”

The DOC doesn’t mandate how county jails are staffed; instead, they make recommendations. Wittrig said the staffing for Crawford’s new jail is organized to balance the recommendations of the DOC with the county’s needs.

“Most places that have a pod system probably have one in Master Control and three on the floor,” he said. “We’re doing one in MC and two on the floor.”

Crawford County Jail Addition 3
ssistant Project Manager John McCrae explained that the colored lines on the floor are to help guide inmates and staff to certain areas. The system is designed to give the jail staff the most time to focus on their primary duties, rather than performing tasks that can be accomplished without their direct assistance. The blue line leads to program areas for inmates, such as exercise areas or the library; the yellow goes to Zoom courtrooms; and red indicates “stay back” lines denoting where inmates must stay more than three feet away from glass barriers. - photo by Steve Van Kooten

Jail capacity

The new jail can hold up to 76 inmates. The addition was designed for closer to 42, with the space to accommodate more by installing extra bunks; however, Wittrig said it was more cost-effective for the County to expand the jail’s capacity now while the construction contractors were already on-site, rather than waiting until a later date.

According to McCullick, the county decided in part to maximize the jail’s occupancy in order to hold inmates from other correctional facilities, including the State facilities. “If we’re able to bring some in from the State or somewhere, it’ll help pay for [the jail]. That’s our reasoning for it.”

He added that the new jail will give Crawford County the option to let some inmates serve out the last year of their sentences at the jail rather than in a prison. Generally, inmates in Wisconsin county jails are serving sentences that are one year or less.

Wittrig said that housing inmates from the prison system to finish out their sentences wouldn’t be any different than the inmates held at the Prairie du Chien Correctional Institute, which is a minimum-security facility. “It’s the same inmates.”

The sheriff considered housing inmates from other places before, but the DOC said the old jail wasn’t suitable. “I had some [inmates] that wanted to serve their last year out here, and I couldn’t allow them to do it — not that we didn’t want them to... The State said, ‘Your jail won’t work.’”

He added that most of the candidates he considered previously were serving sentences for OWI-related offenses.

Wisconsin law generally considers inmates who qualify for earned-release and other placement programs for relocation to county jail facilities.

Housing inmates from other places may be a future revenue stream for Crawford County, but it won’t likely be an immediate priority. McCullick said the county is “probably not” going to look at housing inmates for the first year the new facility is open. “We’ll let our staff figure this jail out because it’s totally different than what they’re used to.”