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JAIL SPACE EXPANDS

November 21, 2008 12:36 am

Local authorities got a first look yesterday at the new addition to the Rappahannock Regional Jail, an expansion that's been two years in the making.

Superintendent Joe Higgs said yesterday, that the jail's addition was completed on schedule and under the $58 million budget.

"Don't worry, there aren't inmates here yet," Higgs said smiling to the group of local police officers, and government officials gathered for the small ceremony in one of the new 48-person housing units.

Lt. Richard Franza, who oversees policies and procedures for the jail, said the new addition makes Rappahannock the largest regional jail in Virginia.

Walking through the halls of the new wing, Franza introduced a tour of mostly reporters and prosecutors to the freshly painted walls and smooth concrete floors.

"And just look at this," Franza said, shaking his head, wiping what appeared to be a footprint off a clean blue door.

Each housing unit will be monitored by one guard in the unit and another who sits in a control booth behind one-way glass, he said.

The security is the same in the new wing as in the old units, said Cpl. K. Boswell, a team leader for the guards.

Each cell will eventually be home to two inmates. They get a small blue mattress, about 3-inches thick that sits on a steel frame. Other than the toilet in the corner of the cell, the rooms stay pretty bare, Franza said.

A large metal, locked door separates cells from the recreation and eating common area, where inmates spend all of their free time. During a stint at the jail (a maximum of 24 months for convicted inmates) prisoners never go outdoors.

Spotsylvania County Sheriff Howard Smith, president of the jail's board, said yesterday that the state's additional funding for the wing should be attributed to local legislators.

House Speaker Bill Howell, whom Smith pointed to as being instrumental in getting the new wing approved by the state, said he hoped other localities throughout the state would take a lesson from the success of the Rappahannock Regional Jail.

"This is a model to duplicate," said Howell of the way the city of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania, Stafford and King George counties are able to work together with the state to fund and use the regional jail.

A percentage of funding paid by each locality is determined by the number of people arrested in its jurisdiction and later imprisoned. Stafford sends the most inmates, with Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania coming in ahead of King George.

With the wing completed, the next step is to transfer inmates to their fresh new beds.

The first prisoners to move into a new housing unit will be a group of 48 women.

On Dec. 1, they'll say goodbye to their old cells, only to be welcomed home to the new, confined walls of unit C-1.

Ellen Biltz: 540/374-5424
Email: ebiltz@freelancestar.com