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New jail opens to county
By Harrison Keely, Editor
Clay County inmates got out of jail Monday but only long enough to move to a more secure new home.
Before criminals settled in, however, the public got to tour the new $4.3 million Clay County Detention Center during an open house on Saturday, May 31.
"The restrictions in this facility are going to be far greater than what they were going to be in the old one," Corrections Officer Jim Orr said. He said that the last facility was designed to house inmates for around three months, though criminals have been restrained in the cells for up to 17 months at a time.
The new detention center provides room for 48 inmates, four times as many as the old facility, with separate space for male and female inmates on opposite sides of the facility.
Clay County Sheriff Joe Shook said that, due to space restrictions, inmates had been sleeping on the floor of the jail before the move. He said that by utilizing space provided by three holding cells, the new jail could easily accommodate up to 60 inmates if necessary, if not more.
The new jail includes magistrate offices, interview rooms, a booking room and a central jail operation center.
Shook said that no contact with inmates is permitted and that visitors would communicate with inmates through computer video systems and phones. Visitations, he said, would be recorded and stored for a month.
Digital data and information from the complex's intricate network of approximately 40 security cameras will be stored in the jail's new control room, where only one staff member will generally preside, locked in until another employee arrives for duty. Around 16 staff members are needed to operate the jail, the sheriff said.
"There's no way to defeat the technology," Mike Bradley, a liaison from the jail's design firm, Pease Associates, said.
The array of electronics in the control room operates everything from lights, locks and heating to cameras, computers and entertainment choices for the flat screen televisions around the jail.
"We'll probably restrict the channels on the TV," Officer Jerry Hall said. "The news, the Weather Channel and the History Channel might be about it."
Hall said that entertainment options were left to the assistant jail administrator, but that if inmates were behaving well movies, races and events like the Superbowl could be shown.
The new jail is also home to a $27,500 Automated Fingerprint Identification System, obtained by a grant Shook said. The digital system scans hands and produces national matches within minutes.
Laundry and meal services will be provided by the inmates, Orr said. The jail's unfinished kitchen will also serve as a place to prepare food for Clay County's Meals on Wheels program. Plans are to complete the addition, which was closed off at the time of the tour, this month.
The Graham County sheriff has already made plans to transport some of his inmates to the new jail, Shook said. He noted that Graham's jail is designed to house eight but current holds around 14 prisoners.
The transfers will cost Graham County around $40 per inmate, per day, he said.
"You can actually keep them on lockdown 23 hours a day if you have to," Shook said, referring to the individual cells. The new facility's master key costs $3,000 to replace, he said. Shook also stated that room for a medical staff exists in the new jail for future use.
Construction of the new jail, which is entirely tobacco free, began in January 2007. One of the features in the building is a state-of-the-art computer system that tracks rounds made by employees using technology embedded in the walls of prison dormitories.
Shook said that the new facility would be the third jail he's worked in since becoming sheriff. Construction for the new sheriff's office, he said, is scheduled to begin this week.
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