RAPID CITY, S.D. (KELO) — The Pennington County Jail might look different in a few years.
Earlier Tuesday, Sheriff Brian Mueller and the Pennington County Buildings and Grounds Department presented three options for a jail expansion.
The current aging and over-filled facility is bringing up major concerns for public safety officials.
“We’ve had failing infrastructure in our current jail that was built in 1989. And we’ve had issues with our security electronics, our plumbing, our HVAC, electrical issues in the jail. So it’s something we’ve known for a long time that needed a fix, but we’ve also been at or above capacity since about 2014.” Pennington County Sheriff Brian Mueller Said
This expansion is becoming a high demand with the current jail seeing itself fill up more and more. And when this overfilling happens those U.S. Marshal inmates are having to be sent somewhere else, which means federal money is lost here in Pennington County.
It’s money they don’t want to lose.
“Law Enforcement, if they’re out there and they make an arrest, they need to have a place to bring people. So what we’ve had to continue to do is kick out the U.S. Marshal paying customers to make room. I’ve done that but it’s cost Pennington County you know, almost $2 million over the last two years to keep adequate room here. So we have to do something before that revenue is gone and we’re still faced with the cost of having to build this jail.” Mueller Said
If approved, this project would add four floors that could see over 500 more beds added to the Pennington County Jail.
The Pennington County Sheriff’s Office is planning to hold public meetings to get feedback from the community as they continue to work forward on this proposal.
