Since the end of World War II, Cuyahoga County voters had declined 16 times to approve a bond issue to build a new corrections center to replace the county’s aging jail. The issue’s 1968 defeat came shortly after the Cleveland Foundation and its affiliated philanthropy, the Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation, convened and staffed an Administration of Justice Committee (AJAC) to promote community support for reform of the criminal justice system. AJAC worked behind the scenes to convince the Greater Cleveland Growth Association and the mayoral administration of Carl Stokes to create a Greater Cleveland Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, intended to oversee the expenditure of new federal law enforcement monies that the Nixon administration proposed to make available to state and local governments.

The council obtained nearly $50 million in federal funding for such improvements as a police training academy, computerization of the county common pleas court dockets, a public awareness campaign that successfully reduced auto theft, the creation of a safe haven for teenage drug users called the Free Clinic, and a multimedia campaign that helped to persuade voters to pass a bond issue for a new “justice center.” To ensure the excellence of the facilities, staffing, programming and management of the corrections center that would be housed, along with the county courts, in a new tower complex to the south of the federal courthouse, the Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation assembled a panel of five national corrections experts to advise the county on the jail’s design.