“Historic day” – Nebraska begins construction of $350 million prison complex north of Lincoln

At a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday morning at the 300-acre site north of Interstate 80, Pillen and Rob Jeffreys, the director of Nebraska's troubled prison system, offered the most detailed look yet at the state's next 1,500-bed prison complex.

The new prison complex near 70th Street and McKelvie Road — which will replace the 155-year-old Nebraska State Penitentiary in south Lincoln — will consist of two complexes: one for maximum- and medium-security inmates and another for minimum-security inmates, Jeffreys said.

The new complex is being designed by Omaha-based engineering firm DLR Group, which was paid $20.2 million by the state. The focus will be on using natural light and acoustics that will ensure “appropriate noise levels throughout the facility.” There will be nearly three times as much space for rehabilitation programs as in the State Pen, Jeffreys said.

Jeffreys, whom Pillen appointed to head the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services in April 2023, hopes the use of natural design elements will help create a “normative space” that supports the mental health of both the incarcerated men and the state employees who supervise them.

“It's a stressful job. Every day, day in and day out,” Jeffreys said. “But what this building will do — and what we hope to do — is lower those stress levels to increase the mental and physical well-being of everyone in this facility.”

“We want to build a culture of success – from the ground up,” he added.

The state has not yet selected a contractor for the controversial new prison. The site is not expected to be leveled and made ready for construction until later this year. The state will not choose a contractor until early next year – and the prison will not be operational until 2027 at the earliest.

But just the sight of the sorting machines spread throughout the future prison complex on Wednesday morning was enough to excite the governor. He called the planned facility “groundbreaking” and “an investment in Nebraska.”

“I get really excited when I see a bunch of yellow equipment and dirt moving out there,” the governor said. “It makes me feel like I'm back home on the farm. We're digging and making things happen.”

Wednesday's ceremony came nearly a year after Pillen and Jeffreys announced the state would build the prison on a 307-acre site near 112th and Adams streets, about a mile northeast of Lincoln, a move that drew immediate opposition from residents and local officials.

Less than two weeks later, Pillen and Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird agreed to move the site of the new jail to city-owned land at the corner of 70th Street and McKelvie Road, near the city's landfill and away from one of the fastest-growing neighborhoods in northeast Lincoln.

Wednesday's groundbreaking is the latest step in a years-long process to build a new prison in Nebraska, where corrections officials first proposed a 1,512-bed facility in 2020. The cost of the project has risen by more than $100 million in the years since then.

Jeffreys warned of inflation in his remarks Wednesday, but a prison system spokeswoman said the agency was confident it could build the prison with the $350 million the legislature allocated for it last year.

Neither Jeffreys nor other state officials who spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony answered reporters' questions.

But he and other state officials – including Lieutenant Governor Joe Kelly, a former prosecutor who headed the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office for years – used the groundbreaking to make a renewed case for building the new prison, which critics said was proof that Pillen's administration had “no interest in reducing the prison population.”

Kelly said that when he joined the prosecutor's office in 1981, “there were already heated discussions going on about the need to replace the Nebraska State Penitentiary.”

“They didn't build in 1981. And they didn't build in 1991. And they didn't build in 2001. And they didn't build in 2010. The problems got worse,” Kelly said, later calling the new prison “a necessity” rather than “a desire.”

Nebraska's prison system is one of the most overcrowded in the country, regularly housing 1,800 more inmates than the prisons are designed to hold. The new prison is intended to alleviate that problem, but not eliminate it, Jeffreys says.

A June report from the nonprofit The Sentencing Project showed that the state's incarceration rate rose 8% from 2013 to 2022 while crime fell 25%, making Nebraska one of only three states that incarcerated more people over the nine-year period while crime fell.

A lawmaker-commissioned study of Nebraska's overcrowded prisons identified the root cause of the state's prison overcrowding as “legislative changes” pushed through by state lawmakers over the past 15 to 20 years that increased the average length of time inmates spend in state custody.

The results of this study have only strengthened the beliefs of Senator Terrell McKinney of Omaha, who is the leading opponent of prison construction in the House and advocates instead for substantive criminal justice reform.

McKinney, a member of the legislature's Judiciary Committee, has long maintained that the state “cannot solve its overcrowded prison system through construction” and warned that the new prison north of Lincoln “will be overcrowded from day one.”

In addition, he has raised questions about the future of the state prison that have been left unanswered by agency officials.

Although the state has designated the new prison complex as a replacement for the aging prison, state officials have only stated that the state prison will be “decommissioned” with the opening of the new prison.

When McKinney introduced a bill in January that would permanently demolish the state's oldest prison, no one from the prison system showed up to testify at a public hearing on the bill.

A spokeswoman for the correctional facility said on Wednesday that the fate of the 155-year-old facility had not yet been decided.