JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

The New River Valley Regional Jail expansion will add 488 beds, enabling the jail to hold 1,188 double-bunked inmates from the seven localities it serves: Bland, Carroll, Floyd, Giles, Grayson, Pulaski and Wythe counties and the city of Radford.

JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times

A worker inspects part of a new cell block for sick inmates at the New River Valley Regional Jail in Dublin. An expansion at the jail includes new housing units, a new kitchen and a new state-of-the-art security system.

| Shawna Morrison

shawna.morrison@roanoke.com, 381-1665

DUBLIN -- In less than two months, the New River Valley Regional Jail will open at double its current size, allowing it to house hundreds more inmates and provide more than 100 additional jobs.

An expansion at the jail that includes new housing units, a new kitchen and a new state-of-the-art security system is scheduled to be completed by Jan. 3. Renovations to the administrative offices are expected to be finished even sooner.

"It looks like there's a lot of work to be done, but there's really not that much," Superintendent Gerald McPeak said Thursday as dozens of workers milled about, installing the security and electronics systems, laying tile, buffing floors and painting walls and doors.

The project has a guaranteed maximum price of $55.2 million, McPeak said.

About half the money is provided by the state compensation board. The other half is being paid by the localities served by the jail, which pay $27.81 per inmate per day. As of 2007, the last year for which figures were available, McPeak said, only two other jails in the state were less expensive to operate.

The planned expansion cost less than expected, McPeak said, so the money that had already been budgeted was used to upgrade the existing building and construct new administrative offices that are scheduled to be ready by mid-December.

The jail is currently rated to hold 371 inmates but double-bunks to hold twice that number. A few weeks ago, it was crowded with 755 inmates -- the most it has ever held at one time.

The expansion will add 488 beds, enabling the jail to hold 1,188 double-bunked inmates from the seven localities it serves: Bland, Carroll, Floyd, Giles, Grayson, Pulaski and Wythe counties and the city of Radford.

"We've been overcrowded here for quite some time," McPeak said.

The regional jail opened in April 1999, eliminating the need for each of the localities it serves to have its own jail. By 2002, it was getting crowded, McPeak said. In 2005, members of the New River Valley Regional Jail Authority began planning an expansion.

The expansion was designed to accommodate a growing number of inmates at the jail for 20 years, he said. Construction is adding 148,000 square feet to the existing 143,000 on five stories.

As part of the expansion, the jail is hiring 130 new correctional officers and 12 administrative and support staff. About half have already been hired.

"This has been good for the region with all the jobs it has brought," McPeak said. "It's unfortunate that this kind of business is good for the economy."

The older part of the jail will be used to house inmates under maximum security, McPeak said, while the new area will house those under minimum and medium security.

As a new security system is installed in the new part of the building, the system in the existing areas is also being upgraded. Cameras around nearly every corner allow employees to monitor and record the happenings around the building.

From a master control room, employees will be able to control nearly every door, light switch and call box in the building along with some of the toilets, showers and sinks.

The design of the new modular steel cells allows maintenance workers to do plumbing and electrical work without having to bring their tools anywhere near inmates.

Also increasing security will be the way the new cells are set up. Most will be under direct supervision, constantly under the watchful eyes of a correctional officer stationed nearby. Traditionally, an officer has patrolled each area at least twice an hour.

The expansion includes 20 new segregation cells to house the inmates who are on lockdown 23 hours a day. The jail already has 24 segregation cells.

Large dormitory-style rooms were built for people who serve their time on weekends or on work release. Now, they sleep on cots in a recreation area.

Like the new Western Virginia Regional Jail in the Dixie Caverns area of Roanoke County, which Montgomery County is a part of, the New River Valley Regional Jail will soon begin using video visitation instead of the traditional style of visitation, where inmates and their visitors talk by phone while sitting in front of one another and separated by a Plexiglass partition.

New storage and laundry areas, 14 new inmate recreation areas and a high-tech ventilation system designed to quickly pull smoke out of the building in case of fire are also part of the project.

"It's great to see it nearing completion," McPeak said. "There's been a need for it for quite some time."