Looking closer at the jail expansion project

Pennington County residents may be asked to vote on a proposed jail expansion project.

The jail complex has a long history, originally being run out of the end of the public safety buildings. At one point in time a temporary jail was constructed outside of the courthouse. The facility we see today was built in stages between 1989 and 2006. Pennington County Sheriff Brian Mueller said the county was forced to build this jail, and that it was built with the idea of adding an additional floor on top of it.

Its location is centralized near the courthouse, which allows for easy transportation of inmates. This is one reason that relocating the current 600-bed jail would be cost prohibitive. 

All support including medical, kitchen and laundry are currently on site.

Mueller and his predecessors have looked at alternative locations,  including the old Shopko building, but Mueller says the city would not support having a jail at that location.

Mueller went to the legislature to try to buy a piece of property on Creek Drive next to the new minimum-security prison.  

“The legislature voted it down,” Mueller says. 

Mueller also tried to get a piece of property next to the new women’s prison but was told that the site was too small to incorporate anything else.

He was told that Rapid City would only support a jail in an area currently zoned for corrections and that any other area was already accounted for in terms of planning.

Mueller and county Building and Grounds director Davis Purcell presented the jail expansion project to Elevate Rapid City in October and Mueller said “they’re supporting us.”

He adds, “I feel like as far as the city, the community, the business community they support this location. It’s already a jail.”

He said the area does not get jail-related crime calling the impact to the area very minimal.

At the current site the only way the jail can expand is by going up.

That is because the footprint is essentially landlocked, with streets and buildings on each side. The building is tucked away and appears like one might expect: devoid of color, loud, stark. It is immaculate and Mueller takes great pride in his 160-person staff for keeping it that way. It can best be described as vast, with many moving parts. 

The current site needs $3 million in infrastructure repairs, referred to as “alternatives” in the presentation Mueller and Purcell gave to the Pennington County Commission at a special meeting Nov. 6. The presentation is not available online but the public can watch the presentation on the county’s Youtube channel.

As I was toured the facility, those “alternatives” appear more like needs. 

Electrical wires, thick as a person’s thigh, dangle down in the control room of the jail, the epicenter for safety and security of the building.

The center is crammed tight and barely able to accommodate two people. Usually only one person mans the area, scanning all the monitors and noting the ins and outs of everyone in the building. 

The control room manages both staff and inmate traffic. Pennington County uses the control room as an escort for “appropriate classifications,” saving staff time. Mueller points out that if the current security electronics system isn’t enhanced the new facility will have a separate security electronics system which would be a strain on staff.

Mueller also said the current system is failing, sometimes showing a door as “secure” but it’s not really secure because an indicator’s wrong. 

“That can be a pretty major deal for us,” Mueller said.

“Pretty much every door we walk through today,”  said  Pennington County Jail Operations manager Wade Anderson, “is gonna be controlled from here.”

The remodeling plans expand the current control room to three times its current size and guts the current jail and jail annex replacing the security electronics “so they’re all on one system,” Anderson said.

The control room was updated in  2016  but with pre-existing wiring.

“On some of those cabling trays there’s so many wires on there that you can’t run any more wire without completely destroying the existing wires,” Anderson said.

In addition to upgraded security electronics the $35 million “alternative” budget provides for sewer upgrades. This is also an obvious need due to the nature of how the current jail was constructed. 

“The jail was built on a structural slab so you can’t  just cut it out and get to it,” Mueller said.  

Mueller said fixing any infrastructure issues, like HVAC or plumbing, currently is a challenge since the jail is currently at capacity. 

“Contractors have to work around inhabited floors,” Mueller said.

The severity of the issue can be seen in some areas. When you look up you see cast iron pipes exposed in concrete flooring. 

“Sooner or later a toilet’s not gonna flush here and we’ve got to take a floor or housing unit full of people and try to find alternative housing,” said Mueller, adding the cost to Pennington County would be something people would not want to see. This has been a problem for over a decade.

The remodel will address the cast iron pipe embedded in the poured concrete deck.

“It’s just impossible to get to,” said Anderson. “And impossible to repair. Each floor we touch through the renovation we’re gonna try to replace not only the horizontal lines but the vertical lines that go up to each floor.”

Anderson said a huge problem is that service workers, such as plumbers and electricians are forced to make any repairs in tight spaces. 

He says the chases, where the mechanical and electrical and plumbing run up, are currently  crammed in tight little spaces with skinny access doors that force maintenance workers to reach up to a piece of equipment to fix it. 

“It’s really troublesome,” Anderson said.

In the new building those chases will be behind all the cells.

“So you can just walk around an entire cell block as a maintenance person and go fix any sewer line, any electrical issue, any HVAC,” he said.

He estimates infrastructure issues occur on average weekly and sometimes daily.

As a citizen of the county, my biggest concern was the sally port area of the jail. I didn’t quite understand what a sally port was until the tour but it is essentially where police cars sit while inmates get booked. And it is small, too small in fact, to accommodate the growing demands of the area. While those of us in Hill City and Keystone might not realize it, Mueller said on some Saturday nights or weekday afternoons the jail booking area is full. 

If the deputy from Hill City/Keystone is waiting to get an arrested person into booking that takes time and that time means the deputy is not patrolling our area.  

“What our plan does is it puts this sally port out on St. Joseph Street and increases the size of the intake level,” Mueller says. “It’s imperative for safety for sure but really for operations.”

The booking area can be thought of like the triage unit of a hospital; it’s where arrested inmates get evaluated before being assigned a housing unit. Inmates come in with varying issues and mental/medical states. Law enforcement needs to evaluate each inmate effectively to place them in the correct cell block.

The area has already been expanded once about 15 years ago.

Assessing inmates is crucial for the safety of inmates and the booking area does not have a transitional space since the current transitional unit is located in the jail annex.

Mueller envisions that after the remodel “they’ll come, they’ll get booked in and we’ll have time to really assess them in that unit, to figure out what housing unit they need to go to.”

Mueller paints a very vivid picture: “Right now when these 24 beds get full there’s six cops in this area. There are five cop cars with people arrested back here and they’re literally parked down the street with cop cars and people in the back of them. And the jail staff have to figure out, ‘where do I need to move these 24 inmates right now without having any time with them.’ Some of them are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, some of them are assaultive to staff and we’ve got to move them out of the way so these officers can get them booked in and get out on the streets and get to calls for service.”  

These “alternatives” aside, the proposed jail expansion plans include additional housing floors. 

Depending on what county commissioners decide to support, the floors may or may not include housing units, but rather be shawls and have all the infrastructure in place for future units to be put in.

Once a new floor with HVAC, plumbing and electrical is built, a ready to go prefab housing unit, built in Huron according to specifications, would get slid into place “like a jenga,” Mueller says.

Inmates currently have a bunk, toilet and one desk in their cell. The proposed plan includes a shower in each cell; currently the showers are in the dayroom of the cell block.

“Putting the shower in the cell really gives us a lot of operational flexibility,” Anderson said, saying if there is a lockdown inmates “can still continue to do hygiene; it also eliminates one more blind spot in the cell block.”

Mueller said putting showers into cells also creates space for more housing.

Logistically there are myriad moving parts and pieces to the jailing of inmates. One is relations. 

The jail uses direct supervision, which Mueller said cuts down on behavioral issues. Staff is centrally located but not behind glass. The more relationship-based approach was adopted years ago.

“It’s calm when people are in control,” Mueller said, saying that this type of supervision, along with the training “really drives what you’re seeing here.”

Another is necessities. Inmates receive medical and dental care which Mueller said looks “identical” to what one would see in a hospital or dental office.

Then there are the incidentals we might not ever think of, like how many paper towels the jail goes through in a week.  Anderson calls this number  “incredible” and said there is necessity of having enough storage space to buy in bulk, cutting down on costs to taxpayers. 

The preferred jail expansion proposal is to build four housing floors that can each house 148 beds, as well as a mechanical level for those electrical upgrades. 

This will be the highest the jail can go, meaning, if approved, there will not be expansion possibilities on this site in the future. Mueller said, “hopefully smarter people than us in the future will figure out something that can impact our growing jail population in the next 30 years,” if future needs require additional space.

Mueller said roughly 450 inmates out of the current 600 inmates are coming from Pennington County. On the day I visited 25 of those were in jail for murder.

Mueller said repeatedly how Pennington County receives revenue from housing federal inmates, touting 50 federal inmates contributes $2 million to the county. However he admits this cost does not include food, incidentals or medical for the inmates.

The county currently houses high-risk inmates for Fall River County, (one -to-two a day) and  Custer County inmates (he estimated that to be five-to-six a day).

He hopes to partner with Fall River County to offer them future jail bed space in exchange for financial commitment to this project. Those discussions have not yet occurred. 

Right now the sheriff's budget is supported by 46-47 percent of outside revenue.

“You’re not gonna find another county in the country that’s doing that,” Mueller said.

He says the county Commissioners give him the ability to operate like a business.

Purcell stresses this expansion project is the best plan for the county.

“We’re investing in so much infrastructure, meaning new infrastructure for the new jail. There is a heavy cost just to get one housing floor and a mechanical level, but we need to be able to at least  shell some space above because I can guarantee you right now there’s gonna be a lot of hesitancy if we try to hire a construction firm to come back and build floors on top of say the new jail if we only build one floor. You’re swinging large, heavy pieces of equipment with a crane over occupied inmate space. And that drives costs up. And yes, you’re also ripping off the roof and you have an unsecure area below,” Purcell said.

Purcell is adamant, saying, “we at least need two housing floors built out, a mechanical level and then two shelled in floors for future expansion,” stressing the cost will only go up if the proposed project does not get approval now.

The current jail  expansion proposal costs range between $129,598,826 and  $168,000,000 depending on how County Commissioners move forward. The item will likely be discussed further by the Commissioners in early 2025.