By Wayne Gates
The new 40 man dormitory at the Brown County Jail is expected to begin housing prisoners in about three weeks.
The public was welcomed to an open house to look at the new addition to the jail on Sept. 4. Some finishing touches remain, including mounting televisions in the day room, but for the most part, the expansion project is ready to go.
The occupancy permit has been secured and all that remains is a final inspection from the Ohio Department of Corrections this week.
“Once that passes at the end of next week, we could technically start bringing inmates in, but we are still going through some smaller items that we have to finish,” said Brown County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Chris Hodges.
“We also have to finish training the corrections officers that will be working in this pod, so we anticipate opening this up to inmates by the end of the month.”
Hodges said that hiring enough qualified corrections officers has been an ongoing struggle.
“We needed to hire four more male corrections officers since this is a male dorm. We hired three in the in the last hiring process, but in the meantime we had one of our corrections officers resign and another promoted to road patrol, so we are still looking for three more male corrections officers.”
Hodges said that there are currently enough corrections officers on staff at the jail to be able to the new facility as planned.
Once that happens, the original cells in the jail will be primarily used to hold violent or felony offenders. There are currently 68 of those cells, and the 40 male beds in the new dormitory will bring the total capacity of the jail to 108 beds.
Minor offenders that have warrants for misdemeanor offenses or failure to appear or pay child support will now have a higher chance to be put behind bars now that there is more space available at the jail. Currently, many of these offenders are given new court dates when they are apprehended by law enforcement officers in the county.
“If somebody doesn’t want to go to jail, they are going to show up for court and they are going to make their payments to the court rather than get locked up for 30 or 60 days and possibly lose their job,” said Hodges.
The two additional administrative wings at the jail are also now occupied. The road patrol and detective divisions and administration for the sheriff’s department now have more room to be able to do their jobs more effectively.
“We had 15 road patrol deputies working out of one office that was not intended to be used by 15 people. Nobody had room to keep cases files organized or do any other type of administrative work,” said Hodges.
Detective Sergeant Chad Noble said that the new offices will increase communication and collaboration within the department.
“We actually have the room now to organize our caseloads. Each one of our detectives carries 30 to 50 cases and it’s hard to work efficiently when you are in a small, cramped room,” Noble said.
He added that more room will mean more collaboration and contact with other detectives and the road patrol deputies.
“The faster we solve these cases, the more we can get to in a shorter period of time. That means that we can get to more of the people that are out there preying on the citizens of Brown County. I’m excited to see what we can do now,” Noble said.
The total renovation project cost about three million dollars and will be paid off over the next ten years by the county.
