Mount Ayr Record-News, Mount Ayr, Ringgold County, Iowa
Thursday, October 27, 2011

It's been a couple of decades since the dream of a new jail for Ringgold county was first talked about by county sheriffs and almost five years since Ringgold county voters approved a one-cent sales tax to fund one.

Finally the new Ringgold County Law Enforcement Center is getting ready to open and the public will have the opportunity to tour the new facility tonight (Thursday) from 6 to 8 p.m. Sheriff Mike SOBOTKA and the staff will be on hand to give people a tour of the facility that is hoped that most residents will not be using as an inmate once it becomes operational.

The dream began with the three sheriffs that preceded sheriff Mike SOBOTKA beginning to talk about the need for a facility to replace the 1927-era jail that the county has had all these years.

"Someone said that the jail was set up then to house chicken thieves and much has changed in how jails are set up an run since then," SOBOTKA said of the new facility.

SOBOTKA says that the new jail should be able to last as long as the last jail. "I'll be disappointed if it doesn't," he commented.

Visitors will gather in the lobby on the north side of the buildingfor the tours. They will go through the administrative portion of the building first, then see the booking area, view the five pods for holding prisoners (three male and two female), go through the "exercise yard" room and view the control room where the dispatching and jail control equipment in housed.

The facility will be much safer for inmates and staff, SOBOTKA noted.

For example, visitation will be done by video monitor and telephone instead of having direct contact. Inmates will have access to the video monitor and phone in their cells while visitors will have two stations in separate rooms where they can see and talk with the prisoners by the video hookup. When attorneys come to visit, there will be a private area for consultation, but the inmates and attorneys will be talking from opposite sides of a glass partition. The window set up can also be used for magistrates to come to the jail to do initial appearances instead of having to transport the inmates to the courthouse.

The administrative portion of the new facility will house offices for the sheriff, deputy sheriff and deputies where the department will have its own armory for storing guns and ammunition.

The new evidence room will have lockers and a more systematic approach to preserving the chain of custody.

"Not everyone will have keys and procedures will provide better checks and balances for how evidence is handled and stored," SOBOTKA noted.

A window in the lobby to the civil clerk's office will provide a way for people to handle these matters.

Several former sheriffs and current sheriffs from around the area have previewed the facility already, commenting on the layout of the facility.

"The jail is designed to have an efficient flow for handling inmates and moving from one portion of the facility to another,"SOBOTKA said. "In the scheme of correctional facilities this is definitely not the Taj Mahal, but people have commented that our facility would be a model for small facilities in smaller counties," SOBOTKA said.

SOBOTKA joked that the plans should be good after he had to work on five different sets of plans before the building was finally built. The facility is planned well enough that only two part-time people will needed to be added to the department to staff it. During the day there will be two staff present but at night the facility will be staffed by one person.

Part of the planning for the new facility has been the development of the policies and procedures for the new jail. To help with the staffing, inmates will be held in their day rooms from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. with opportunity every two hours to go into the cells and use the restrooms. Lock down in cells will come at 8 p.m. each evening at the shift change where there are two people on the premises. Lock down previously was at 11 p.m. at night and the 8 p.m.lockdown will be the earliest in the state, but SOBOTKA feels it will work.

"We will be setting more of a daily routine for each day in the jail," SOBOTKA said.

The inmates will have the opportunity for going to the exercise area where an overhead door provides fresh air. This is required for one hour segments twice a month. The exercise area is just an open room and does not include any equipment, he noted.

Visitation at the jail has been on Wednesdays, and this has proved to be a problem for family members to get away from work for visits. The new visitation day will be Saturday afternoon and possibly Sunday if there are a number of inmates in the jail. Families will still have to schedule their visits on the Monday for the following Saturday.

Staff has been having training sessions on running the equipment in the new control room in advance of switching over to the new facility. Touch screens are used to open and close the doors of the jail automatically as prisoners and staff move through the facility. A key back up system is also available in case there is a problem with the electronic system.

"Jail staff members are impressed with the new system and we are all pretty excited about the move," SOBOTKA said.

SOBOTKA wants to have everyone be familiar with the facility before reaching out to other counties to offer jail services. There are counties like Ringgold county used to be that cannot house women. SOBOTKA said that a couple of area lawyers had already approached him about clients who need to serve some jail time who wanted to try to schedule it in the Ringgold county facility.

As well as the open house tonight, several groups have been given tours of the facility. Mount Ayr Community third, fourth, fifth and sixth graders will tour the facility for Red Ribbon Week Friday. Other groups that would like tours that can't make it Thursday night can contact SOBOTKA at the sheriff's office about setting up a tour.

The move to the new facility is currently scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 2. It will be quite a production beginning at 4 a.m. that morning as all the 911, radio, computer and other equipment is transferred over to operate from the new building instead of the courthouse.

"We'll have several teams of people working on getting the transition made," SOBOTKA said.

Needless to say, there is the possibility for some interruption of service during the transfer, though every effort will be made to cover all the possible problems. The plan is to have everything up and running by 8 p.m. that evening, SOBOTKA said. Also some of the services the sheriff's department offers will be put on hold while the move ismade. For instance, the sheriff.s office will not be issuing gun permits from November 2 to November 7 while the move in offices is made.

"We're sure there will be a whole different set of headaches we will find with a new system, but we look forward to the new facility and the upgrades it will provide us," SOBOTKA said.

Photograph courtesy of Mount Ayr Record-News

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, March of 2012