As Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame sees it, this county needs a new jail, no two ways about it. He’s said it before and he said it again during an April 15 commissioners’ work session, during which commissioners reviewed several options from an architect’s needs assessment and received an update on current conditions from the sheriff.

Commissioners agree that something needs to be done, but as the old saying goes, “All it takes is time and money.”

Replacing the jail comes with a $42 million price tag, according to the assessment by Moseley Architects. An expansion would cost north of $31 million and repairing the existing facility would cost more than $5.2 million, according to the architect’s report. Board Chair Dan Brummitt speculated that even if the board decided now to build a new jail, it would be between five and eight years before the first detainee would be housed there.

There are no easy answers to the challenges that face the aging jail, but Brame said he’s worried about the lack of basic safety measures being in place – for detainees and for staff.

He said the jail has 20 staff openings right now, and that overnight staffing is sparse at best. Hiring is difficult, he said, partly because of the salary offered and partly because of the jail conditions.

“Pay does help,” Brame told commissioners. “We do need an increase in pay. But they will not come because they feel unsafe … those inmates could take over the facility any time they want to.”

The county recently spent half a million dollars to replace security doors at the jail, but Brummitt said they were not installed properly and the Georgia company that installed them has not returned to finish the job to the county’s satisfaction.

County Manager C. Renee Perry said she would look at the terms of the contract to determine if the county has any recourse in the matter.

There are other more routine maintenance issues that need attention, and the jail does have an employee who handles them, but other issues like replacing light fixtures and moving outlets away from inmates’ reach are things that require an electrician.

And tradespeople don’t want to do the work because it’s unsafe.

“We have an unsafe facility down there,” Brame said, “from the doors, to how it’s designed, to staffing.”

Commissioner Sean Alston said there are federal grants to apply for help with paying for a new jail and he is hopeful that recent talks with Don Davis and others are going to pay dividends in that area.

Perry said she had submitted to Davis two capital projects for funding consideration – the jail and a new EMS building.

It all comes down to safety, Brame said. “We’ve got a lot of dangerous people in our facility,” 40 in jail for murder. Between June 2021 and July 2022, there were 26 major incidents that occurred in the jail, including death, rape and assault.

From 2019 to 2024, Brame said there were 636 incidents at the jail that came in to 911 – from the jail. “Ninety percent of our people are violent offenders,” Brame said.

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