Moving Oklahoma County's jail to Del City area is a mistake - for OKC and the incarcerated

Efforts by the Oklahoma County commissioners to select a site to build a new detention center have been fraught. They’ve been at it now for more than a year, and the public’s involvement has steadily grown with each passing month that often saw consideration of seemingly random sites nestled near neighborhoods on the metro area's eastern side.

As each community has time and again rallied to point out the obvious — that the current site of the jail is the best site and certainly better than their backyard — it has become apparent that county commissioners want anywhere but there.

Over the past year, I have worked alongside and heard from hundreds of community members on this issue, and the preference of the public is virtually unanimous: Keep the jail where it is, in close proximity to the hundreds of millions of dollars of public infrastructure that detained people rely on, including dozens of bus stops and the bus station, the Oklahoma County Courthouse, the Diversion Hub, TEEM, the Oklahoma City Municipal Court and the Downtown Library — most of the places people tied up in the criminal justice system need to go.

Alas, the commissioners have selected an area very near to Del City and Crooked Oak Public Schools to build a new jail. The site is 71 acres. It’s about 10 times the size of the current 7.2 acre site. And that is, in and of itself, antithetical to the progress and mission of criminal justice reform. It denotes preparation for and anticipation of a steep incline in the county’s capacity to incarcerate.

More: Oklahoma County commissioners choose Grand Boulevard land as jail's new home

But it is, by no means, a done deal. Oklahoma County has not yet purchased the property and is still considering other sites. The “Del City” acquisition also will require zoning and other points of assistance from the Oklahoma City Council — a body not unfamiliar with the processes necessary for responsible undertakings of vast public infrastructure works. I suspect they might question both the process that led to this result and the prudence of it.

For one, county commissioners have been reviewing and selecting sites based on property owners’ voluntary submissions — not by starting out with a process to identify the optimal location and then acting to acquire it. From any angle, it’s difficult to understand why the "Del City" location is the best site for a new jail. It doesn’t make sense for the criminal justice system, which will be further strained by transportation costs on all ends. It doesn’t make sense for the people detained there who will be stranded at great distance from public transportation and all of the other services downtown. And it doesn’t make sense for the people who live near that site either, whose property values will surely plummet.

More: Broken Trust: How the Oklahoma County jail leadership failed those it sought to protect

For 35 years now we have been afflicted with a desperate crisis of human suffering and death — wholly preventable if we would have done it right the first time. Good process leads to good outcomes. I fear the process, or lack thereof, the county commissioners have employed to select a new site could very well straddle us with another 40 years of wholly preventable problems.

Jess Eddy is a community organizer in Oklahoma City. 

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Moving the Oklahoma County jail is a massive mistake | Opinion