KNOX COUNTY, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — Sunday afternoon the Knox County Jail opened their new $36 million expansion to the public.
After years of construction and some delays, the new additions to the Knox County Jail are now complete. The jail offered in-depth tours of the new facility for members of the community on Sunday.
Knox County Sheriff Doug Vantlin explains why the jail needed this expansion.
“The overcrowding for one,” he said. “Just counting our own county’s inmates, we were up to 220 and we only have a 250-person 220-bed facility on the old side, so it was just the necessity of getting more beds to hold more people.”
This addition includes 104 more beds to the jail to be able to spread out these inmates. Adding these rooms will allow the jail to keep these inmates in-house and save the money by not sending them out-of-county.
Out of these 104, 32 of them will be lockdown cells for inmates who are misbehaving. The Commander of the jail, Noble Parish, said these changes will make everything operate smoother for inmates and staff members.
“It is just going to be nicer,” he said. “They are going to get along better, we aren’t going to have to break up fights, we have room to put people. We don’t have to sit and figure out where we are going to cram someone when they come to jail, now everything is going to flow naturally and hopefully work better.”
Although this expansion can be seen as positive, Vantlin said he wishes they didn’t have to.
“Yes, it is good to have the extra beds, but it is sad too that we have to build a bigger jail,” said Vantlin.
Vantlin said that they plan to start moving inmates into these areas within the coming week.
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