cody@southwesttimes.com
On Friday, officials from Pulaski, Bland, Carroll, Floyd, Giles, Grayson, Radford, and Wythe came together for a special ceremony to dedicate the renovation and expansion of the New River Valley Regional Jail.
The facility cost $55.2 million, with half of the cost provided by the Virginia State Compensation Board. It is five stories and has 139,000 square feet of operational space. It will cost approximately $27.81 per day to house each inmate.
"The biggest benefit is relieving the overcrowdedness," said Gerald McPeak, Superintendent of NRV Regional Jail Authority. "The old facility (houses) 371 inmates. The new facility boosts that capacity by over 400.
The decision to expand the facility was made in 2005. The following year, Thompson & Litton architecture firm was hired to oversee the plans. Balfour Beatty and English Construction officially started the project in March of 2008 and it was just recently completed.
Among the many new features the jail will offer are direct supervision rooms, which allow the police officers to keep constant observation of every inmate at the facility.
"The officers will be in the housing units with the inmates 24 hours a day, seven days a week," McPeak said. "They can prevent the fights. They can detect when damage is done to the facility and try to prevent that."
There are also two types of cells that will help to separate the extreme and less extreme inmates from being housed together.
"Minimal custody inmates will be in the cells where there are four bunks," McPeak said. "Medium custody inmates will be in the cells where there are two bunks. It is just a classification issue. Classification is based on their crimes and their behavior in here. If they are a youthful offender, we don't want to put them in an area where there are career type criminals. It just helps us to split the inmate population and make it a safer environment."
Also helping with the control of the inmates are new video visitations, which keep the inmate contained, but still allow them to talk to and see their loved ones on a video screen while they are in the lobby.
"It's a time saver," McPeak said. "We don't have to move the inmates as much because of the video visitation we have now. We don't have to move them for recreation because they have recreation within their housing units now. It is a much more efficient facility."
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