Mayor Donna Deegan says Jacksonville needs a new jail in addition to community investments

Mayor Donna Deegan said the city has no choice but to build a new jail and she voiced support for hiring more police officers while also adding money for intervention programs and economic development aimed at creating safer neighborhoods.

Rough estimates for the cost of building a new jail have put it in the range of $1 billion , but Deegan said there could be ways to do it at less cost to the city.

Deegan voiced her all-of-the-above approach to reducing crime during a town hall Monday night at the Legends Center for the first of six sessions she'll have in different parts of the city over the next couple of months to hear what people want in next year's budget.

As residents took turns at a microphone in a packed meeting room at the Legends Center on Soutel Drive in Northwest Jacksonville, Deegan faced questions about whether the city is putting too much spending into the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office at the expense of investing in neighborhood-based programs.

Jacksonville resident Jamil Davis, the Florida lead organizer for Black Voters Matter, noted Deegan called improving quality of life a core value for the city budget.

"Why is the new jail a priority when many in our city suffer from a lack of resources?" Davis said to applause from the crowd.

Deegan said the county jail off Bay Street in downtown is in "horrible shape and it's frankly not fit to be used much longer."

"We'll have to find a solution to that," she said.

Deegan said there might be alternatives to the city paying to build a new jail by entering instead into a long-term agreement to lease a jail built by an outside organization.

"There are all kind of things we can do without spending insane amounts of money, but it does have to be an issue we address because we have a growing community," she said.

She said the vision for a new jail built outside of downtown would include a separate mental health facility near it "so we don't have so many mentally ill that are actually put into jail." That comment won applause from the crowd.

She said city officials are having meetings with various people about what the best approach would be for building a new jail. She did not give any timeline other than that current jail is in its final years.

"It's not something we have a choice in," she said.

She said she also wants to ramp up city spending on programs for affordable housing, reducing homelessness and providing prevention and intervention programs to reduce crime on the front end.

She recently created the Jacksonville Journey Forward program that is based on the Jacksonville Journey program created during Mayor John Peyton's term that had early success in bringing down the city's high murder rate. The 11-member board overseeing Journey Forward will create a plan for coordinating services in existing city departments.

As residents said they wanted to see more city investment in community-building programs, Deegan noted she proposed $10 million for affordable housing and $10 million for programs to reduce homelessness in her 2024-25 budget. City Council eliminated the funding for affordable housing and cut the spending for homelessness to $1 million.

Council members objected to using the city's operating reserves to pay for those programs. Deegan has said the city's reserves have grown greatly and the city still would have been in strong financial shape after tapping into them to tackle crisis situations in Jacksonville.

Deegan and City Council did reach agreement on a $300 million community benefits agreement with the Jaguars as a side deal to the $1.4 billion stadium renovation that will be financed by the city and the Jaguars.

Part of the community benefits agreement will go toward countywide programs for workforce development, affordable housing and homelessness.

Since becoming mayor in July 2023, Deegan put money into both of her budgets for hiring more police officers. She noted that Jacksonville's murder rate plunged by half in 2024 compared to 2023 and said the Sheriff's Office must have enough police to respond to calls so people can "feel safe in their neighborhoods."

"If they have a greater police presence when they're having crimes in their neighborhoods, it's helpful," Deegan said.

"That's not true," a woman called out from the audience.

Deegan disagreed. She said she's talked to residents and business owners who "get very frustrated with their businesses being broken into and with violent crime and they want more police officers on the street."

When a woman said what residents want is more investment in the community, Deegan she's "not disagreeing with that at all."

"I do think we need more community investment which is why I've invested in the Jacksonville Journey Forward and other initiatives for homelessness and affordable housing and making sure people can stay in their homes with roofing programs," Deegan said. "We have invested in those things but that does not negate the need for public safety."

Davis said after the meeting at the Legends Center that work by grass-roots organizations in Northwest Jacksonville has helped to lower the crime rate and can do even more with financial support in the city's budget.

"That's really what I'm looking at — the bigger picture of investing more into our community instead of investing more into public safety through JSO," he said.

Incarceration rate: Duval County's rate exceeds other big counties as city considers new jail

Change for good?: Jacksonville murder drop called a 'turning point' but such hopes have been dashed in past

Deegan's town halls will continue next week at Ed White High School on Tuesday, Feb. 4, followed by the Beaches Watch meeting at Beaches Branch Library on Feb. 5.

She will be at Atlantic Coast High School on Feb. 18, Riverside High School on March 4 and First Coast High School on March 11.

All the meetings will last from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. except for the Beaches Watch meeting that will be from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Deegan and her staff will be working on next year's budget in the coming months, and she will present it to City Council in July for the next fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville Mayor Deegan supports building new county jail