A new report commissioned by Louisville Metro Council says the city’s downtown jail is aging, inadequate and cannot be modernized. The best option, it argues, is to build a new one.
City officials, including Metro Council members and Mayor Craig Greenberg received the final report late last week. It was prepared by CGL Companies, a consulting firm that, among other things, helps local governments design and construct new jails. Metro Council commissioned the report in 2023, following a spate of more than a dozen in-custody deaths at the jail.
The Louisville Metro Department of Corrections continues to struggle with staffing shortages and overcrowding at the facility on West Liberty Street. CGL concluded that the design of the jail itself contributes to these issues.
“The current LMDC facility fails to meet modern standards in nearly every core area of safety, health, programming, classification, and staff support—and cannot be renovated to address these deficiencies,” the firm wrote.
CGL estimated that building a new, modern facility would cost between $389 million and $530 million, depending on the size.
Metro Council Republicans called on the city to start planning for a new jail in the Safer Louisville Agenda they released in September.
District 19 Council Member Anthony Piagentini, who chairs the caucus, told LPM News Tuesday he thinks the overall cost could be lower than the report estimates. He said that while spending millions on a new jail is “not a sexy topic,” numerous reports have indicated it’s necessary for the health and safety of corrections officers and the people incarcerated there.
“I think this report, if anything, justifies what we’ve been saying, which is we need to move forward with a new facility and the only question is when are we going to be in a situation to do it,” he said. “Let’s create a plan that gets us there.”
In a statement, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said he and his team are reviewing the recommendations. He also highlighted other training and mental health services improvements at LMDC, steps his administration is taking within the bounds of the current facility.
“My new Office of Behavioral Health is focused on getting services and treatment to those who cycle in and out of incarceration due to substance abuse or mental health challenges,” Greenberg said. “Keeping those better served by treatment out of jail will reduce overcrowding, strengthen our system, and most importantly help those who are struggling to get the care they need.”
Criminal justice reform advocates, meanwhile, immediately condemned the new jail recommendation.
The ACLU of Kentucky, Showing up for Racial Justice Louisville, VOCAL-KY and other advocacy groups issued a joint statement arguing that spending millions of dollars on a new facility is “counter to everything our community really needs.”
Shameka Parrish Wright, a Metro Council Democrat and head of VOCAL-KY, said solving the problems at LMDC, where 21 people have died since 2021, is “not about needing a new jail.”
“The issues are that we are holding too many people in jail on bails they cannot afford, and the health care provider hired by the city has failed to do its job there, despite our efforts to make them accountable,” Parrish-Wright said.
The coalition also questioned the credibility of CGL’s recommendations in the report. Louisville Metro should never have contracted with “a company with so much to gain from a decision to build a new jail,” they argued.
CGL’s case for a new jail
The four-story jail building was originally constructed in 1968 as offices for the Metropolitan Sewer District. Even now, LMDC’s design looks more like an office than a jail.
For years, jail officials have said the building’s boxy design — with tight hallways, too many corners and small windows into the dorm rooms — is dangerous. They say the design doesn’t allow for direct supervision, which can’t be solved through basic renovations.
On the medical floor, where people with physical and mental illness are held, there is little room for one-on-one therapy and the cells aren’t even large enough to fit a hospital bed.
In its report, CGL said the building’s design “compromises staff safety, treatment delivery, and the facility’s ability to support effective programming.” The firm praised the reforms that have been instituted by Jail Director Jerry Collins, such as putting overdose reversal drugs in the dorms, expanding programming for incarcerated people and hiring a chief psychologist. But CGL argued these reforms are constrained by the facility.
“The outdated design impedes staff safety, operational efficiency, and the ability to implement evidence based practices,” the report said.
At its maximum capacity, LMDC provides 183 square feet of space per bed, a little less than half the space offered by a modern jail, according to the report. LMDC has a space waiver from the state in order to continue operating.
LMDC often exceeds its capacity, though, leaving some people incarcerated there sleeping on the floor or plastic cots called “boats.” As of Wednesday, there were about 1,500 people incarcerated at the jail, according to LMDC’s population dashboard. That’s more than 140 people above its rated capacity of 1,353 beds.
CGL estimated that the average daily population at the Louisville jail will grow at 1% each year.
By 2035, the average daily population at LMDC could be 1,443, meaning the jail would be significantly overcrowded every day, not just during peaks. Those estimates don’t account for more recent drivers of incarceration, such as the Safer Kentucky Act that criminalized homelessness and increased penalties for certain crimes.
CGL also found that core building infrastructure, like HVAC, plumbing and fire safety “are outdated, prone to failure, and costly to maintain.”
“The cost of maintaining and renovating the current facility continues to rise and is projected
to exceed the cost of constructing a new, modern facility,” the report concluded.
The cost estimate presented to Louisville officials for a new, 1,563-bed facility was $482 million to $530 million. That estimate assumes construction starts next year. The longer the city waits, the more expensive construction costs will likely become.
New jail would fail to address ‘the root causes of incarceration’
The report also included a cost estimate for a modern facility that is smaller than the existing jail. It could house about 100 fewer people.
That facility, CGL said, would cost from $389 million to $428 million.
But why would Louisville Metro spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a jail with less capacity than the already over-crowded one? CGL said officials can substantially reduce the need for jail beds if it implements a series of reforms.
These reforms, which would require buy-in from the city, local prosecutors and county judges, are laid out in three overarching recommendations.
CGL urged officials to explore cutting down on jail booking for people accused of low-level offenses by expanding deflection and diversion options, such as citing and releasing people instead and automatically rescheduling people to fail who show up to court rather than issuing arrest warrants. The company noted that nearly 40% of people booked into LMDC in 2023 were released within 24 hours.
The report also asks city officials to take a look at expanding reentry support for people who are incarcerated, helping them find housing and employment. That could reduce the number of people who end up back in the Louisville jail.
Lastly, CGL urged officials to “enhance pretrial justice, bail reform and case processing efficiency.” The data the company looked at found that while the overall number of people being booked into the jail has decreased in recent years, people are staying in the jail longer.
That could be reduced, CGL argued, by judges using pretrial detention less and moving criminal cases through the system quicker.
Criminal justice reform advocates have praised these recommendations, which align with some of the system-level changes they’ve been pushing for. But they call the inclusion of a new jail a “poison pill.”
Attica Scott, a former state representative and head of special projects for the group Forward Justice Action Network, said the money would be better spent on addressing the root causes of incarceration.
“We need to invest in the educational outcomes of young people who feel like there’s no path forward," Scott said. “Instead of cutting all of those youth employment opportunities that we’ve long had, we need to make sure we’re balancing intervention efforts with long-term investments in our community.”
Scott and other advocates say investing in education, employment and affordable housing can help reduce the jail population. And Scott said she doesn’t think residents want the city to go all-in on building a new jail.
“Particularly in this political climate where we find ourselves, where folks are hungry, they’re terrified about their SNAP benefits, they're terrified about their WIC,” she said. “People are worried about real issues that impact their survival. To then slap them in the face with spending $400 to $500 million on a new jail? … I think most people would be disgusted.”
It’s unclear where these recommendations by CGL will go.
In the immediate term, Metro Council Member Anthony Piagentini said the Republican Caucus would like company representatives to appear before the council to answer questions and explain their cost estimates. He said he’s open to hearing more about their proposed reforms, too.
“I don’t want to spend more money than we need to, so I’m all for the reforms if they lower costs and don’t increase the risk to the public,” he said.
Actually building a new jail, Piagentini said, is something that will take years, maybe even a decade. That’s if there’s bipartisan support, which he’s not sure there is.
Republican council members are planning to push the city to start slowly, thinking about where a new jail could go, what it would look like and how the city could fund it over a series of years.
Piagentini said he’s concerned that the conditions at LMDC will eventually attract the attention of the federal government, spurring a civil rights lawsuit like the one Louisville has faced over its policing practices.
“I don’t want to stick the future constituents, the future taxpayers of the city with what could be an emergency idea because we have kicked the can down the road because it’s not sexy,” Piagentini said. “And how much less expensive do we think it’s going to be 10 years from now, 20 years from now?”
If a lawsuit happens, he said he wants the city to have a plan in hand, rather than be reactive.
