Construction will start on a new Greene County Jail October 27. The $76 million facility will replace the old county jail in downtown Xenia on East Market Street.
The Greene County Jail was built in 1969. It's been under a federal consent decree for poor conditions and overcrowding since 1989.
The current facility can house up to 146 inmates. The county has another building called the Adult Detention Center — which is used for minimum-security offenders — that has a capacity of 236. The new facility will include 250 beds and will be built adjacent to the Adult Detention Center on Greene Way Boulevard.
Greene County Sheriff Scott Anger said the county has needed a new county jail for years. Recently, it's seen an increase of people experiencing psychiatric or medical crises.
As a result, the new facility will include more adequate spaces and beds for people in crisis, according to Anger.
“The jails weren’t necessarily intended to be a place for people that were in crisis,” Anger explained “But because of the lack of other infrastructure in our state, we have to be prepared to deal with that kind of crisis when it comes our way.”
Part of the cost for the new facility will be covered by a $15 million state grant from the Ohio Jail Safety and Security Grant Program. Voters rejected a tax levy to pay for it in 2021 and a similar levy in 2020.
Other funding sources include money from the county’s American Rescue Act fund, including $20 million from its general fund.
Bomani Moyenda, a member of the Greene county Coalition for Compassionate Justice — a group that strongly opposed the jail levy in 2021 — said he’s disappointed the county is moving forward with the project after voters rejected the levy.
“It's kind of like a radical, you know, kind of in-your-face response to the will of the people,” Moyenda expressed. “These people are just going to do what they want to do regardless of what they're hearing from concerned community members.”
Moyenda said a better use of the money would be to provide more mental health and drug use rehabilitation services rather than sending people to jail.
Anger said the Adult Detention Center will be used as overflow for inmates, but it will also be used as a space for counseling services like the county’s Greene Leaf program — a residential drug and alcohol program that provides intensive substance abuse counseling.
Anger does admit any other drug rehabilitation or mental health services is dependent on what grants or funding sources are available to the jail.
“We're always dependent on personnel and grants and cooperation from other agencies,”Anger said. “So we'll have challenges in that regard. But it's my aim to do everything we can, as most contemporary as we can to provide those services in the jail.”
Alejandro Figueroa is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms.
