Sheriff: Safety, crowding will plague uptown jail despite Jail North reopening.
Safety and crowding concerns will continue to plague the uptown jail when Jail North reopens to alleviate conditions, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden warned late Friday.
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“How many people are still sleeping on stack-a-bunks?” McFadden said in a 9 p.m. news release. “Ask whether we have enough detention officers to safely staff both facilities as the population continues to increase weekly.
“Those answers are just as important as the reopening of Detention Center North itself,” he said.
County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to pass a budget amendment allowing McFadden to spend $3.2 million to reopen Jail North, The Charlotte Observer reported. The board also approved a health plan for the jail.
Located off Statesville Road north of uptown, Jail North was a juvenile detention center from 2020 to 2022 before staffing problems forced its closure.
McFadden first proposed reopening Jail North in May, the same month the Observer reported on complaints by several people being kept in the jail.
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The Sheriff’s Office has blamed the crowding in part on Iryna’s Law, legislation named for the Ukrainian refugee fatally stabbed on Charlotte’s Blue Line light rail in 2025. The criminal justice bill changed some pretrial release rules. Mecklenburg has since recorded its highest average daily jail population since fiscal year 2008, the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement before Tuesday’s commissioners’ meeting.
In a statement in Friday’s news release, McFadden called the planned reopening of Jail North “very needed and very important, and I appreciate the County’s support in making it possible. But this cannot become an opportunity to declare victory and move on without addressing the rising needs and concerns.”
Despite a plan to move 200 people from the uptown jail to Jail North, the main jail “could still have more than 200 individuals sleeping on stack-a-bunks,” the sheriff said. They include at least 80 people sentenced to the state Department of Adult Correction who can’t be transferred due to state capacity limits, he said.
“We have essentially robbed Peter to pay Paul, moving part of the population and pressure from one facility to another without addressing the full scope of the problem,” the sheriff said.
“Mecklenburg County taxpayers deserve to know the full story, because we will come and ask for assistance very soon as the population continues to grow,” McFadden said.
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