Sheriff proposes mental health wing for jail

An Ozaukee County committee on Tuesday approved the first step toward a county jail expansion to provide improved inmate medical and mental health care and to nearly double the jail’s Huber work-release capacity.

Supervisors on the Public Safety Committee unanimously approved Sheriff Christy Knowles’ proposal to spend $21,940 to contract with Milwaukee-based Venture Architects to develop a pre-design plan “to understand the project’s scope, needs and constraints before commencing actual design work,” she said in a memo to the committee.

Initial discussions have so far identified a need for a mental health facility that will accommodate 10 secure beds and six public beds, that would  include jail staff areas, a psychologist’s office, nurses’ work areas, visitation access and program space, according to a letter to Knowles from Venture Vice President and Project Manager Cory Beyer.

The project would include the renovation of an existing jail dormitory for “special needs.”

The Sheriff’s Office and the county Health Services Office have long bemoaned the increasing number of behavioral health and mental illness crisis incidents.

That caused the county last year to form a co-responder team, consisting of specially trained deputy and social workers to be involved in such cases.

In addition, Knowles’ proposal would help address the lack of mental health facilities in the county as well as the cost to the county of paying overtime to deputies who must stay with suspects who are taken to local hospitals for treatment.

“I believe it would help reduce the time spent on Chapter 51s considerably,” Knowles said, referring to the process of committing people to facilities for mental health and other treatments.

The largest component of Knowles’ proposal would be a jail addition that would include a 75-bed Huber facility, a new sally port and a new laundry facility.

The jail’s current Huber dorms house 40 inmates and are near capacity, she said.

“When we go beyond the 40 Huber (inmates), we occasionally need to house the Hubers with other minimum security non-Huber inmates, which is not an ideal situation,” she said.

Knowles said she did not know how large the addition would need to be.

“The project is in its infancy and it’s unknown if the entire project will be approved or not,” she said. “It is essential to investigate how all future additions and renovations can be completed on the existing site.”

The contract with Venture will be paid from the Sheriff’s Office boarding reserve fund, Knowles said.

Beyer said the pre-design document should be ready to review by the end of the year.