The Jesse R. Dawson State Jail (JD) was a co-gender nonviolent offender state jail operated by the

Corrections Corporation of America CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), is a company that owns and manages private prisons and detention centers and operates others on a concession basis. Co-founded in 1983 in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas W. Beasley ...

owned by the

Texas Department of Criminal Justice The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails, ...

(TDCJ). It was located in

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

,DAWSON (JD)
."

. Retrieved on June 3, 2013. on the banks of the Trinity River.Wilonsky, Robert.
Dallas' Dawson State Jail on chopping block, but Texas Department of Criminal Justice has final say
" ''

The Dallas Morning News ''The Dallas Morning News'' is a daily newspaper serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, with an average print circulation of 65,369. It was founded on October 1, 1885 by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the ''Galvesto ...

''. May 28, 2013. Retrieved on June 3, 2013. For a long time, officials from the City of Dallas have advocated for the closure of the jail in order to use the land for the

Trinity River Corridor Project The Trinity River Project is a public works project undertaken in the 2000s in the city of Dallas, Texas, United States. Its goal is to redevelop the Trinity River. The project aims to turn the river's path into a collection of sports fields, trail ...

. Because of some health-related deaths that occurred before May 2013, the

Texas Civil Rights Project Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas, that advocates for voting rights, racial and economic justice, and criminal justice reform. It was formed in 1990 by attorney James C. Harrington. ...

, the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

(ACLU) and other area groups had advocated for the closure of the jail. Because the State of Texas had a decrease in its state jail population, state lawmakers had wanted the prison closed.

Texas Senator The Texas Senate ( es, Senado de Texas) is the upper house of the Texas State Legislature. There are 31 members of the Senate, representing single-member districts across the U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent polit ...

John Whitmire John Harris Whitmire (born August 13, 1949) is an American Lawyer, attorney and politician who is the longest-serving current member of the Texas Legislature, Texas State Senate. Since 1983, he has represented Texas Senate, District 15, Distri ...

advocated for closing Dawson and the

Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. ...

in late 2012. In May 2013 the state government moved to end the $97 million budget for the facility as a way of closing the facility. The facility was closed in August 2013.

References

External links

*
DAWSON (JD)
"

. Prisons in Texas Buildings and structures in Dallas CoreCivic {{Texas-struct-stub