Dukes County Sheriff Robert Ogden last week called on state lawmakers to reject a proposed moratorium on jail construction.

The legislature's joint judiciary committee is considering a bill that would enact a five-year moratorium on the expansion of any correctional facility in the state. The bill, filed by state Rep. Chynah Tyler, would also halt the study, design, planning and construction of any new correctional facilities, as well as ban any expansions of existing detention centers.

Converting any portion of existing facilities to house incarcerated people would also not be allowed. Renovations on facilities would only be permissible if they are for maintenance or to comply with building codes.

An original 1873 lock on one of the 20 Island jail cells. — Ray Ewing

During a committee hearing July 25, Mr. Ogden said the bill would dash the Island sheriff’s hopes of rehabilitating the Island’s failing 150-year jail.

“[The bill] would expressly interfere with these efforts,” Mr. Ogden said.

Built in 1873, the Dukes County jail in Edgartown is both the house of corrections and the regional lockup for arrestees awaiting court dates on Martha’s Vineyard. It is the rare facility that serves both functions; most mainland police departments have their own lockups.

“Our agency serves approximately 20,000 year-round and over 200,000 summer residents in an isolated geographic location accessible only by air and water,” Mr. Ogden told legislators. “We are obligated by law to provide the only regional jail and lockup for eight law enforcement agencies and the trial court. The facility we operate in has deteriorated to the point of a major improvement or replacement, and quite frankly, is an obligation of the commonwealth to maintain.”

There are 20 cells in the jail, which normally holds about 10 people in the house of corrections and handles about 900 arrests annually.

Though the building looks like a stately Edgartown house on the outside, a 2021 audit by the state Department of Public Health found it couldn’t meet state standards on cell space and had poor plumbing, among other things.

Mr. Ogden, who was re-elected to a second six-year term as sheriff last November, called the jail “archaic” in the leadup to the election and ran on rehabilitating the facility.

For years, the sheriff’s department has been working to provide a temporary modular solution and that plan is on the state’s current capital improvement plan for 2024-2028.

Mr. Ogden feared the bill would endanger those plans.

“[The bill] puts us in a precarious position,” Mr. Ogden said. “Our facility is falling down around us and we’ve finally gotten on the [capital improvement plan]. This would drastically affect our facility, especially in the next five years… We wait another five years, I can’t anticipate what could happen.”

Several people at last week’s hearing, both public officials and incarcerated women at the Framingham prison, supported the moratorium. The state has considered replacing the women’s prison in Framingham and advocates for the bill said that money could be better used elsewhere.

The moratorium was approved by the state legislature last year, but was later vetoed by then Gov. Charlie Baker.