Allegheny County is moving forward with a year-old initiative to hire a consultant to plan what could be drastic changes to the county jail, including reducing its capacity by half or more.

Nearly a year after issuing a request for proposals, the county has selected a company and is currently negotiating a contract, according to the county comptroller’s office. The firm selected is CDI Architects, a subsidiary of TranSystems.

The county has done business with CDI Architects on several occasions in recent years, and its former parent company, LR Kimball, designed the jail in the 1990s. Both entities were acquired by TranSystems in 2021.

A TranSystems spokesperson declined to comment and directed PublicSource to “our client, the County, for this request.”

Amie Downs, spokeswoman for County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, said the county is not discussing bid selection processes until they are complete, but “this is the next step in the effort we we have undertaken to reduce the prison population in Allegheny County and implement justice system reforms.

When Prison Supervisory Board member Bethany Hallam asked Warden Orlando Harper about the project at a July 7 public meeting, Harper said he couldn’t comment and added, “I have to do a little more research in order to provide information.”

The RFP says the county is looking for a jailhouse overhaul and suggests 500 to 1,000 beds would be “appropriate for Allegheny County’s population and crime rate.” The current capacity of the prison is over 2,000 people. Its average daily population this year is 1,670, compared to an average of 1,822 over the past three years.

The request left it to the consultants to come up with exactly how to accomplish the redesign, suggesting plans could include redesigning the current facility, increased use of other facilities, or creating an entirely new facility.

The proposal period opened on July 1, 2021 and ended on September 1, 2021. The county made no public announcement regarding the initiative or the ensuing bidding process.

Read the full RFP here.

Bret Grote, the legal director of the Abolition Law Center, said the prison population can and should be reduced, but the county’s request for proposals does not adequately explain how it will make that a reality.

“I have a lot of questions about how the county and the court system would be engaged, as well as police departments,” Grote said. “If you just changed the design of the building, it won’t change the number of people who will be sent there each day.”

TranSystems, a Kansas City, Missouri-based company with national reach, advertises expertise in architecture, aviation, infrastructure, construction, and program management, among others. TranSystems acquired CDI Architects in 2021 when it acquired LR Kimball, an architectural firm whose downtown Pittsburgh office address is now listed on TranSystem’s website.

The county has signed several contracts with CDI for engineering and architectural services in recent years, paying $1.1 million while under the LR Kimball banner and more than $725,000 under TranSystems.

With the jail-related contract currently being negotiated and the proposal still under wraps, it’s unclear how much a potential contract could cost the county or what the scope of work might be.

Six other companies have submitted proposals for the project, according to the comptroller’s office. These are: AE Works, GCL Companies, HDR Architects, Justice Management, POH Architects and STV Architects. Proposals are not publicly available until a contract is officially awarded.

The request for proposals was related to the Safety and Justice Challenge grant the county received from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2018. The county’s website states that the goals of the project are to reduce the prison population and reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system.

In an application to renew its MacArthur grant, the county wrote that it “will complete a community-informed process to develop a master plan and capital budget request for a redesign of the jail to reduce its footprint.” .

The same app lists several proposed actions to reduce the prison population, including:

• a study of racial disparity in bail decision-making
• expedited judicial processing
• reduce probation period
• prevent the incarceration of people in mental health or addiction crisis.

The prison has come under intense scrutiny over the past year, with a controversial training contract, chronic staffing issues and a string of deaths among the incarcerated population, sparking fury from defenders and putting the prison administration on the defensive.

News of this request for proposals was met with skepticism by prison reform advocates last summer. Hallam, also a county councilor, said at the time that she feared the project would lead to more and smaller facilities. Another council member, Liv Bennett, said she wondered if the county would “transform what incarceration looks like instead of decarceration.”

Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter and Report for America staff member. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @chwolfson.

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