BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Monroe County Sheriff Ruben Marté is once again asking county councilors and commissioners to make significant progress on establishing a new Monroe County Jail.
“The staff at this point is at a maximum of what they do right now, and they are tired,” Marté said at a joint meeting Thursday.
Marté and his staff gave a presentation to county leaders, painting a bleak picture of the issues he says would arise if the county continued to put off the jail project.
“What worries me at night is, God forbid, someone in the jail—a staff member—is killed, or an inmate is killed,” Marté said. “The potential is there. When you have overcrowding and you have no space, tempers flare up. When we lock somebody down, it’s because we have to lock somebody down.”
One of the main points of the presentation was insisting the county consider the new facility’s functional capacity, which is 80% of the total number of beds a jail can hold.
According to the Indiana Department of Corrections County Jail Operations, jails are considered overcrowded or near capacity when the functional capacity is above 80%
A jail feasibility study shared in April, recommended the county build a new facility that could house 450 to 500 beds.
However, Marté said a 400-bed jail would still be above the functional capacity.
A new jail would likely need to be closer to 500 beds.
Marté, who took over as sheriff in 2023, said the status of the new jail project hasn’t changed since he was elected.
“We all want a clean, safe, and humane jail,” Marte said.
The April study also found the average length of stay for each inmate has gone up by 20-percent.
Currently, the Monroe County Jail operates under a 2009 settlement from a lawsuit by the ACLU, which claimed the crowded conditions at the jail are unconstitutional.
“I implore you: please, please, please, please act now because there’s nothing else we could do,” Marté said.
County councilors and commissioners did not discuss where a new jail should be built.
Current estimates from the jail feasibility study predict the new facility could carry a price tag of upwards of $99-million. The report said it could be closer to $150-million if the facility would house courtrooms, the prosecutors office, and probation department.
