Condition of the Jackson County Jail on Wesley Street
JACKSON, MI -- When Gary Schuette first began his duties as Jackson County sheriff, he thought repairs to the handicap-access ramp at the front of the department’s office building would be the most significant construction job he would need to oversee.
It wasn’t until May 2021 that Schuette was able to take a complete tour of the jail facility at 212 W. Wesley St., after being told the building had much more dire maintenance needs.
“Shocked,” “appalled” and “disgusted” are all good words to describe Schuette’s reaction to what he saw on that tour, he said, which is why he’s now campaigning to build a new jail.
“As I went through (the jail), I couldn’t believe the state of disrepair that it was in,” Schuette said.
The department is currently working with an architectural firm on plans to build an addition to the county’s second jail on Chanter Road. Schuette’s goal is to keep the project within the $40-50 million price range. The sheriff plans to work with the Jackson County Board of Commissioners throughout June and July to devise a method of raising those funds through a county millage tax increase. A millage proposal could go before voters in November.
The Wesley Street jail was built in 1952, and first occupied by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in 1953. In order to combat issues of overcrowding, additions to the building were added in 1978 and 2004, allowing the department to house as many as 185 inmates.
Issues of overcrowding were alleviated further in 2004 with the construction of a second jail facility located at 1995 Chanter Road. The open barracks-style Chanter Road facility is currently used to house lower-priority inmates, and can house a total of 252 detainees.
As it was built in an era when it needed to double as a nuclear fallout shelter, the Wesley Street building is outfitted with two-foot concrete side walls, as well as 16-inch interior walls throughout the facility, Schuette said.
“That’s created a lot of challenges for us to get Wi-Fi and different cords though the facility in order to be able to facilitate needs for Zoom court and those kinds of concerns,” Schuette said.
However, the building’s shell is not the only problem -- even more serious signs of decay can be found throughout the facility, down to its core.
‘There’s always a leak somewhere’
For some, Flex Seal is a product most notable for its goofy advertisements where CEO Phil Swift demonstrates the product’s instant repair capabilities in various entertaining ways.
For staff at the Wesley Street Jail facility, the thick, rubberized sealing liquid might be one of the only things standing in the way of catastrophe.
The building’s boiler room contains several pipes held together by little more than Flex Seal and constant maintenance, and key electronic devices for the building’s phone systems are precariously located within arm’s reach of the leaky pipe system.
The kind of structural weaknesses on display in the boiler room can be found throughout the 70-year-old facility.
“(Leaks are) gonna happen somewhere, we just don’t know where,” said Anthony Stewart, Jackson County Jail captain. “There’s always a leak somewhere, if not multiple.”
The facility’s sewer system is as old as the building itself, Schuette said, and has not received a complete overhaul since construction. Decades of use and punishment have not made the system stronger.
“The inmates don’t want to be here, so they’re doing all sorts of different things -- they’ll flush down their pants, they’ll flush their shirt and socks down the toilet just to cause problems and clog the drains,” Schuette said.
On several recent occasions, a plumbing crew using a Roto-Rooter tool with a drill attachment tried to clear blockage from a drain, only for the drill to get diverted, breaking through the pipe instead.
“The clogs are stronger than the pipe,” Schuette said.
Like the facility itself, many door and cell locks in the jail also are about seven decades old, frequently breaking and needing repair.
When trials began to resume after several months of delays from COVID-19 safety concerns, one maximum security cell door would not open due to a broken lock, Schuette said, forcing jail staff to torch the hinges of the door off.
Since the door itself was several decades old, replacement parts were impossible to come by, Schuette said. Ultimately, the sheriff’s office brought in a specialist from Wisconsin who was able to rebuild the door and create new hinges at the cost of $4,500.
“(The locksmith) said, ‘Gentlemen, you’ve got a problem here, because all of these doors are going to go bad pretty soon,’” Schuette recalled.
The jail’s electronic locking system is also failing, requiring many of the doors to be opened by keys. Replacing the outdated system could cost at least $25,000 -- a figure Schuette believes is optimistically low.
The plumbing and lock issues are far from the only problems facing the building. Outdated camera systems and the layout of the cells themselves often hinder staff efforts to closely monitor inmates, Schuette said.
The ground beneath the building’s parking appears to be gradually sinking as well, creating a widening gap underneath the perimeter fence’s gate, and causing the 1978 addition to the jail to slowly become detached from the older portion of the building.
Schuette’s current plan to improve conditions for staff and inmates entails the construction of an addition to the Chanter Road facility, allowing all inmates to be housed under a new and improved roof.
“My main direction here is to have a new jail,” Schuette said. “It’s not necessarily for me to have a new office and administration services building. If we’re able to accomplish that in a cost-effective way, then we’ll try to do it, but the main thing is to have a new jail -- one that’s safe for the deputies to work in, and one that’s safe for the inmates as well.”
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