Rowan Judge-Executive Jim Nickell is defending the county’s plan to build a 250-to-300 bed jail.
Nickell points out that the current lockup, which opened in 1990, has only 78 beds…but holds well over a hundred prisoners each month…
Nickell says the county needs to make sure that its not in a similar situation in a decade or two by building a detention center that’s too small to meet Rowan County’s needs.
Rowan officials plan to submit their application for permission to build a new jail to the State Department of Corrections in the coming days. The hope is to have the facility up-and-running by the fall of 2016.
