New Iowa Women’s Correctional Center
Local and state officials turned dirt Friday on a new center to help women with criminal records straighten out their lives. The 1st Judicial District of the Iowa Department of Correctional Services broke ground on the $6 million Waterloo Women’s Center for Change. Reported by the Waterloo Daily Courier.
The 45-bed residential correctional facility at the corner of Lafayette and Elm streets will provide treatment and support services to women on probation, parole and work release.
“People can change, and this center will help us facilitate that change,” said Karen Herkelman, district director for the correctional services.
The center will free up room in the existing 150-bed facility at 314 E. Sixth St. and allow officials to serve men and women at separate sites.
John Baldwin, director of the Iowa Department of
Corrections, said the center represents a commitment to residential corrections that should not be abandoned in tough economic times. His department will be asked to fund 19 new positions to open the center when it’s completed in February or March.
“I have no doubt that the operation here … will produce amazing results for the women incarcerated in our system,” Baldwin said.
Lt. Gov. Patty Judge also was on hand for the ceremony and defended the I-JOBS program providing the money for construction. The $875 million bonding program, which is to be repaid with gaming revenues, was designed after the floods and in a deep global economic recession to pay for infrastructure projects that created jobs.
Despite naysayers, Judge said, “that’s the path we’ve chosen, and we’re going to put thousands of Iowans to work in the process.”The Women’s Center for Change is the second building on what is expected to be a human services campus between Lafayette and Mulberry Streets north of the former Rath Packing administration building. Work is well under way on a new Operation Threshold headquarters, and a new distribution center for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank is also in the works.
“In this neighborhood it is so invigorating to see this kind of construction going on,” Waterloo Mayor Buck Clark said. “It’s so vitally important that we have this kind of growth in this part of our community. “
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