Allen County Jail

The Allen County Commissioners still do not have the necessary funding for their 30-year construction lease with the building corporation and have been urged to wait on groundbreaking for the new jail until they get it.

The Allen County Council voted no on funding for planning work necessary for construction of the new Allen County Jail. The Allen County Commissioners said they'd be forced to notify the federal judge overseeing the federal lawsuit.

Allen County Sheriff Troy Hershberger made the report to the U.S. District Court earlier this week, a requirement of a federal lawsuit filed in 2020 by the ACLU on behalf of inmates.

The 4-to-3 vote came as a deadline approached for getting an income tax increase done this calendar year, and before a deadline imposed by a federal judge awaiting a plan on a permanent fix to address overcrowding and other issues.

In a letter dated Tuesday, the commissioners urged the council to adopt the local income tax rate to fund the $300 million jail ahead of the Nov. 1 deadline.

Allen County Residents Against the Jail, an organization against building the new correctional facility, wrote a letter to the Allen County Council this week asking it to consider a new strategy, but some members, citing the pressure from the federal judge overseeing the case, said that proposal is not likely to get a vote.

A week after a federal judge pressured the Allen County Council to fund the new jail proposal, the body delayed that vote for the second month in a row.

Superior Court Judge Fran Gull says that moving it completely away from the center of the criminal justice system is costly and potentially dangerous.

At a federal court hearing on the status of the Allen County Jail, U.S. District Judge Damon R. Leichty warned "the people won't like the answer" if county officials do not fund a solution to the constitutionally deficient Allen County Jail.

Allen County is increasing its staff at the county jail again after the County Council approved payroll funding for five new officers. Chronic understaffing was one of the issues tackled in the federal court order concerning jail issues.