Louisville needs a new jail costing as much as $500 million, experts say

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville needs to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new jail, a national consulting firm found in a recent report.

CGL companies, a firm that specializes in jails and detention centers, was tapped by Louisville Metro Council in 2023 to look at the jail after a string of inmate deaths in the downtown facility. CGL helps plan, design, maintain and manage justice facilities across the U.S.

Its team of experts found Louisville Metro Corrections no longer meets the city's needs, highlighting structural issues, space limitations and an increasing inmate populations.

"The facility has been stretched to its absolute limits, with administrators repurposing every usable space to address evolving needs," the report says. "The building’s design has reached a point where no amount of creativity or adaptation can overcome its fundamental structural limitations."

According to the report, LMDC currently features 183 square feet per bed, while modern facilities average more than 370 square feet per bed. A jail built to modern standards, given LMDC's current capacity of 1,353 beds, would require a building more than twice the size of Louisville's current jail. And that's before the predicted increase in average jail population, which, the report states is about 1% annually based on the city's current criminal justice practices.

"To accommodate peak population fluctuations, the system would require an estimated 1,563 beds—well beyond the safe capacity of the current LMDC facility," the report says.

Earlier this year, 12 Republican members of Metro Council's minority caucus unveiled more than a dozen proposals — titled "Safer Louisville" — highlighted by a need to reopen the city's juvenile jail. But among the proposals was the construction of a new correctional facility as well.

"Increase advocacy for the planning and funding of construction of a new and more modern jail that will allow us to serve both the inmate population as well as the staff that works within the jail in a safer manner," the plan says. "Project is a multi-year endeavor."

CGL said no amount of creativity or adaptation can help make LMDC viable as it stands. So the consultants offered two cost estimates: one in which Louisville makes no efforts to reduce incarceration (baseline) and one in which the city implements strategies for diversion, expedited case processing and community-based interventions (alternative):