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

Corrections Corporation of America CoreCivic, Inc. 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. ...

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 American and Canadian English 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 district ( ...

Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...

, 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 in 2022 of 65,369. It was founded on October 1, 1885, by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the ' ...

''. 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. Because of some health-related deaths that occurred before May 2013, the Texas Civil Rights Project, the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million. T ...

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

John Whitmire John Harris Whitmire (born August 13, 1949) is an American attorney and politician who has served as the List of mayors of Houston, 63rd mayor of Houston, Texas, since 2024. Whitmire was previously a Democratic Party (United States), Democratic ...

advocated for closing Dawson and the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility 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. Th
Trinity Park Conservancy
purchased the jail for $3 million and set to transform the former prison into the anchor for new Trinity Park with park offices, bike rentals, restrooms, and restaurants.

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. Prisons in Texas Buildings and structures in Dallas CoreCivic 2013 disestablishments in Texas {{Texas-struct-stub