Amid conflicting facts and feuding officials, there's little consensus on where or what Knox County's new justice center should be.
by David Madison
There's a break in the six o'clock news. Televisions all over Knoxville go black. A child's plaintive voice comes over the air.
"The original justice center contained courts, a jail, a parking facility, and sheriff's offices... But now, the courts are gone and so is the parking."
White lettering over a black screen then asks, "Where's the justice?"
This ad, and others like it, are scheduled to run this week as part of a media blitz aimed at stopping the construction of a 472-bed maximum security jail downtown. The campaign is funded by a snowballing network of activists affiliated with the group City People, which is just one of several organizations up in arms over the county's plan to build the jail at the corner of State Street and Union Avenue downtown. Also in the chorus are the county's chief prosecutor, Mayor Victor Ashe, and some county commissioners. And now, the project's original consultant—on whose work the justice center plan relies—says a smaller jail on a different site would meet the county's needs.
If it's ever completed as originally envisioned, the project could create a centralized justice center with the Knoxville Police Department, county courts and state supreme court located next to the new jail and Sheriff's office.
The courts aren't necessarily "gone" from the justice center project, as the current anti-jail media campaign leads the public to believe. Instead, what's missing is consensus. It's a commodity more difficult to build than jail cells. And as the current political snarl demonstrates, it's also easy to tear down.
For more than a decade, Knox County has tried to bring its future criminal justice needs into one centralized focus. But in that time, the move for a unified justice center has actually done more to push rival county officials apart. Sheriff Tim Hutchison offers statistics about jail overcrowding in support of the new jail while Attorney General Randy Nichols insists the county has plenty of empty cells.
And if these two county officials—the one responsible for prosecuting criminals and the one charged with locking them up—can't agree on the basics, then jail critics say the county needs to re-examine its justice center plan. That's why those backing the current anti-jail media blitz want the county commissioners to delay construction on the $90 million project for six months.
Jail supporters dismiss calls for the delay, saying debate over the project has gone on since 1989 when a federal judge ordered Knox County to do something about overcrowding in its jails. By 1996, a task force waded deep enough into the planning process to hire consultants from Carter Goble Associates in Columbia, S.C. Bob Goble led the study for CGA, scrutinizing crime statistics, jail capacity, existing buildings, and potential sites for constructing new criminal justice facilities.
At the time, says Goble, "The top priority was the in-take center."
Goble's report offered the County Commission a variety of remedies. It could build a 256-bed jail and in-take center in a central location near downtown. A facility of this size, says Goble, could meet Knox County's needs. Still, the consultant put forward another option: Building a larger, 472-bed jail and in-take center.
Goble says the Sheriff and County Commission decided to go with the larger jail because, as the consultant explains, "At the time, the trends were that there was growth in crime and there would be a need for jail space."
Those trends continue, says Commissioner Frank Leuthold, who says he's been studying local criminal justice issues for the last 20 years.
In the next 20 years, continues Leuthold, Knox County is going to need new courtrooms. And because the county now owns the 500 block of Gay Street, courtrooms of the future can one day be built adjacent to where the county plans to build its new jail. Such proximity will allow the entire criminal justice system to operate more efficiently, says Leuthold.
In the next few years, the county plans to demolish the historic buildings along the 500 block of Gay to create parking for the jail. When asked if the county can guarantee that the 500 block will one day become a courts complex, Leuthold says, "If you want a guarantee, we'd have to fund it today."
Leuthold then hastens to add that the county already owns the 500 block of Gay, so down the road it won't have to come back and purchase the property at a higher price. The commissioner goes on to say that when jail opponents insist that new courts will never be built along the 500 block, they're telling themselves, "One big lie."
While Leuthold and a majority of commissioners continue to back the county's justice center plan, the consultant who helped launch the project says Knox County doesn't need a 472-bed jail. Bob Goble says projections made in 1996 about increases in violent crime have proven false. Like the Knox County Attorney General's office, Goble says studies from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and FBI support the construction of a smaller jail.
So today, says Goble, "Now that the growth is significantly lower, I think the 256-bed facility is even more feasible. There's even more reason to build a smaller facility."
Goble recommends the county use land available at the Knoxville Safety Building site on Church Avenue.
There is enough room at this location to accommodate a complete justice center, says Goble, whose study explored how the county could add a courts complex to its new jail and in-take center.
In 1997, when the county was trying to decide on where to begin developing its justice center, the Commission considered the Safety Building site and other locations downtown. Every proposed site inspired its own set of opponents.
With the Safety Building site, it was the Knoxville Bar Association. Attorneys complained about the site's distance from their offices downtown. The Bar Association then prevailed on Mayor Victor Ashe to rescind the city's offer to make the site available for the justice center.
Today, Ashe continues to bob and weave when confronted with questions about where the justice center should be located. Because the justice center remains a county project, Ashe has been able to jockey around the issue, currying political favor with jail opponents by taking shots at the County Commission.
At the same time, Ashe says he doesn't want to "polarize" the issue by offering specific alternatives to the county's plan. Instead of firmly stating the city's position, Ashe shares his points of view several times a day via email, posting comments with the K2K Internet discussion group.
The K2K forum, founded a few months back by architect Buzz Goss, has recently focused its dialog on the State Street jail site. Members of K2K have turned their keyboard chatter into a sidewalk petition drive. They've also thrown their support behind the anti-jail media campaign.
"The jail at long last has triggered some public awareness and it's no longer just inside courthouse politics," says Ashe. "And I think that's healthy... Without K2K and others, I think this would have slid on through."
Near the top of Ashe's hard-to-pin-down priority list is the future of the 500 block of Gay Street. Three years from now, says Ashe, he doesn't want to see "a gaping hole" where the old S&W Cafeteria and other buildings currently stand. At the same time, Ashe won't offer an alternative to the county's plan, saying only, "We are taking a hard look at that internally."
Ashe isn't so shy when it comes to criticizing the County Commission and Hutchison.
Hutchison says the mayor sent his office a letter in November expressing the city's interest in one day becoming part of the justice center project. But when asked about the possibility of the Knoxville Police Department eventually moving its headquarters from the Safety Building to a new justice center facility, Ashe expresses no enthusiasm.
"I think it's an open question that any mayor will be willing to spend money on that," says Ashe. "It's not like we're going to come in and do it after four years, six years. A new mayor will visit the question anew."
Ashe continues, saying, "It's astonishing to me that given all the other needs in the county that this is a priority, especially when it's debatable that there's even a need."
By expanding the detention facility on Maloneyville Road in East Knox County and building a new jail and intake center on the Safety Building site, says Ashe, the county could adequately meet future demands on the system. Of course, Ashe stops short of officially reoffering the Safety Building site for county use.
However, the mayor is glad to offer his take on the politics driving the current jail project on State Street. He dismisses the sheriff's insistence that the Maloneyville Road facility cannot be expanded because the county promised the nearby community that maximum security prisoners would not be held at the East Knox detention facility.
"They don't give a damn about it," says Ashe, describing how the Sheriff and his supporters on County Commission used "raw political force" to get the Maloneyville Road detention facility built just six years ago. That's why it's disingenuous for the Sheriff to now say he wants to do right by the people living out by the detention center, says Ashe.
The mayor goes on to say that the sheriff and County Commission "didn't care about it the first time they did it. Well it's nice that they do now."
He then adds, "I'm afraid some facetiousness has creeped into my comments."
The debate over the jail has become so heated, hyperbolic comments have echoed from all sides of the issue.
Robert Loest, a prolific contributor to the K2K forum and outspoken downtown resident, has insisted the new jail will include "hot tubs" for inmate use. And he's suggested that downtown will become unsafe if the relatives of those who are in jail are allowed to wander city streets. If the jail gets built and you want to visit downtown, says Loest, you'd "better bring a gun."
In defense of his plan, Hutchison has intimated that the taxpayers of Knox County have a choice between funding the $90 million project or "turning loose criminals on the street." (Most recently, Hutchison stepped down as construction manager for the project, saying his political enemies were using his involvement to discredit the "much needed" jail.)
Beneath all the hot air generated by the jail debate there is one patch of common ground. Everyone appears to agree that the county needs a new in-take facility—one located closer to downtown than the current facility on Maloneyville Road. This necessity could be met for "significantly less" than the $90 million budgeted for the current jail project, says Goble.
But what about future needs—the demands the County Commission says it anticipated when it laid the groundwork for a justice center on Gay and State Streets?
By building a new jail and in-take center on the State Street site and holding on to its property on the 500 block of Gay, the county wants to keep its options for future development open. It wants to nurture the possibility of one day building a new criminal courts complex on Gay Street, even as it considers alternatives such as renovating the old Post Office and Courthouse on Main Street.
For now, says Judge Richard Baumgartner, he and the other Criminal Court judges have adequate space. But it's a different story in Sessions Court and Domestic Relations Court.
"It reminds me of the mid-'70s when you literally could not get into a courtroom," says Baumgartner. The judge also echoes a opinion shared by County Executive Tommy Schumpert, Commissioner Leuthold, and other justice center supporters. He says, "The City County Building was not built to be a secure building. That wasn't a concern in the 1970s. At the time, there was no such thing as walking through a metal detector to go into a court room. They just didn't think about it back then."
When the county crafted its justice center plan, says Hutchison's chief deputy, Dwight Van de Vate, it put a lot of thought into security. It also looked for ways to save money by planning ahead.
"It's always cheaper to build in today's dollars," says Van de Vate, explaining why the county should build the bigger maximum security facility as soon as possible.
"There is a bordering on desperate need for more maximum security beds," adds Van de Vate. "That fact gets lost in all the smoke and mirrors with people playing with the numbers."
In order to better focus those numbers, says skeptical Commissioner John Schmid, the county should hold public hearings to debate the issue.
"It's do or die in the next 30 days," says the rookie commissioner, who favors funding what he describes as "soft remedies."
"Why not put some of that money into initiatives that prevent crime, like teacher pay and deputy pay and community policing," says Schmid.
"In addition, when you put your money into soft remedies," he continues, "you have some flexibility in how you spend."
However, after years of debate over the issue, a majority of county commissioners remain rigidly loyal to the current justice center project. That won't stop opponents of the jail from packing the next County Commission meeting on Jan. 24. Borrowing a line from one of the scheduled anti-jail TV ads, they'll point to the project's $90 million price tag and ask commissioners, "Can you think of anything you'd rather do with that much money?"
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