Shelby County officials, who last year approved funding for preliminary work to build a new juvenile detention facility, are now exploring alternatives such as renovating a closed youth facility in Southeast Memphis.

Sheriff Floyd Bonner said he wants the county to consider renovating the old Shelby Training Center to house all juveniles in the system.

Bonner said the option emerged after talking with County Mayor Lee Harris.

One of the reasons to consider a renovation of the center at 3420 Old Getwell Road instead of building a new facility, Bonner said, is to beat the deadline set by a federal law in 2018 that will no longer allow juveniles to be housed in adult facilities.

Forty youth charged as adults are housed at the women’s jail at Shelby County Jail East. By December 21, 2021, under the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, they will have to be moved to another facility housing only juveniles.

Bonner says new juvenile detention center shouldn’t be ‘undersized’

“This is going to affect jails all across the nation that house juveniles, and not just our jail,” Bonner said. “So by the end of the year, we have got to come up with a solution and we are looking at (the training center) versus building a new facility, which would cost millions of dollars, and so we are hoping that we don’t have to build that.”

An extended discussion took place last year among Shelby County leaders about building a new juvenile detention center at an estimated cost of $25 million.

Harris says he’s surprised commission delayed detention center funding

Harris called building a new juvenile justice and education center one of his top priorities last year. The Shelby County Commission voted last January to allocate $1.3 million for design and construction for the new facility, which would be built next to the existing juvenile detention facility at 616 Adams Avenue.

Commission recommends allocating $1.3 million for new juvenile justice facility

Since last year’s vote to allocate funds for design and construction, there had been little public discussion about replacing the juvenile detention center until Bonner recently raised the possibility of renovating the training center with The Daily Memphian.

Details about possibly moving the youth facility to Old Getwell Road are very fluid, said Lauren Lee, spokeswoman for Harris.

“The Mayor’s office is looking in to the best options for the taxpayers and the youth,” Lee said.

Commission approves allocating $1.3 million for new youth justice facility

Everything is being studied, she said, including the possibility of the Shelby Training Center location or Adams Avenue for the new youth facility, which will focus on education and rehabilitation.

The county was approached by CoreCivic about the using the Southeast Memphis property, and county officials have gone on several tours, said Commissioner Eddie Jones, finance committee chairman.

The Shelby Training Center — near the old Tall Trees youth facility on Old Getwell Road — is owned by CoreCivic, formerly the Nashville-based Corrections Corp. of America, or CCA. It is a private prison company that owns and manages private prisons and detention centers across the country.

CCA closed the 200-bed Shelby Training Center in 2008. 

The County Commission talked in 2018 about leasing and renovating the Shelby Training Center for 10 years to the tune of $2.1 million a year. After the 10-year lease, the county would have the option of extending the lease for another two years or purchasing the facility, according to published reports.

However, some commissioners did not like the idea of using the facility and the option was shelved at that time.

The $1.3 million for design and the $25 million for construction of the new building are still in the capital improvement budget, Jones said, but none of the money will be spent until a decision is made about the old Shelby Training Center property.

There were no approved expenditures for the 2020 fiscal year. But the five-year CIP schedule shows $4.5 million in FY21, $12.5 million for FY22 and $8 million for FY23 for the juvenile justice and education center.

“If something can be worked out for the Shelby Training Center, I think it would work better and we could use more of the CIP dollars for county infrastructure,” Jones said.

However, he believes a new facility would cost at least $50 million.

Last year, when the County Commission approved the funding for the design and construction of the new center, Commissioners Tami Sawyer and Edmund Ford Jr. abstained from voting. Both cited their ongoing concerns about the culture at Juvenile Court.

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was ending its six-year oversight over Juvenile Court. Final reports from DOJ monitors criticized the court on several points, including systematic discrimination against African American children and not providing due process for youth in court proceedings.

Justice Department ends federal oversight of Juvenile Court

“I understand we’re voting on an allocation regarding whether or not we’re going to have a new facility in four or five years,” Sawyer said during that Jan. 28, 2019, meeting. “It makes it hard for me to say, ‘Yes let’s do this,’ with no real depth of consideration about what’s happening today.”

Recent news reports about the 15% increase in the number of Shelby County juveniles transferred from juvenile to adult court, coupled with plans to revisit the new facility, continue to make her point, Sawyer said this week.

“All of this moving at the last minute gets in the way. Making fast decisions flies in the face of making policies to ensure that we have safe facilities for our youth regardless of what they’re charged with,” she said.

A look inside the Shelby County Juvenile Detention Center shows the human side of controversy

Sawyer said she’s more concerned with getting the transfer number down than building facilities, on which the commission has not been updated.

“We haven’t gotten any plans for it. Look back at what I said last year, here we are a year later. Nothing has happened,” she said.

And, after the recent release of the Tennessee Comptroller’s audit of the Tennessee Department of Correction found inaccurate reports on inmate deaths, failure to adequately address sexual abuse and harassment allegations and other issues, Sawyer has asked Harris for a similar review of the county’s jails and prisons, including the youth detention center.