Opinion : The sights and sounds of a prison in progress

The LEC is full of construction materials and equipment.

Jerry Petermeier points out part of the LEC project during tour on Tuesday.

A crew member reviews plans as he works in office area of LEC.

Jerry Petermeier and Kelly Yeager look over part of the plans for the new LEC.

The window from the sheriff's office. Sheriff Forsyth should be able to use this room by May 1.

In a few months, perhaps, the unwilling occupants of the new Benton County Law Enforcement Center will hear the sound most-often associated with prisons: The echo of a door clanging shut.

From the outside, it appears as though the building is nearly ready for use. Most exterior brick work has been finished. The roof is mostly done. Windows, too.

Inside, however, the work is just beginning, and the building is filled with a variety of other sights and sounds.

On Tuesday, Dec. 28, the Benton County Supervisors toured the interior of the LEC again. The county’s project manager, Jerry Petermeier, led the tour. County Treasurer Kelly Geater also joined the supervisors.

I accompanied the leaders on the tour on Tuesday, as I did a few weeks ago. But this time was different. Due to the weather, workers have closed of the entire building, except for makeshift double plywood panel doors where the front entry will be. All of the building products and tools have been moved inside. I tried to take photos, but mostly my photos show construction materials. It would be hard to look at any of my photos and say, “Oh, I see. That really is a jail.”

Also, county officials have asked us not to take photos of the interior of the prison area, out of fear that such photos might inspire future inmates to begin plotting escape routes.

Whether we should be flattered to know that our criminals are Vinton Today readers, or offended that local leaders think our readers are future thugs, I will leave up to the reader.

I, of course, comply with these requests, while at the same time finding them amusing.

Here – omitting some of what I observed in the new prison area – is what I saw on Tuesday:

The word “Justice” appears throughout the building – not declaring the LEC's purpose, but rather the name of the company that is installing most of the electrical components.

Instead of the clanging of metal, the sound that fills the building and muffles every other noise is the sound of the large heaters that use a combination of gas and electricity to keep the job site warm enough for work. A radio played rock music, but the noise of the heaters drowned out the singers and musicians.

Workers are framing the walls of the administrative offices. But instead of hammering 2 X 4 boards together 16 inches apart on center, the workers are using metal studs, attaching them with screws – a much more quiet process.

And since the Tuesday tour took place during the lunch hour, the workers were even more quiet. Someone brought a large bag from the local fast food restaurant. One guy headed to a microwave near the prison area. Others lounged in lawn chairs set up in one of the office areas.

The building is much larger than the previous one, mostly because the state and federal guidelines for building prisoners have changed. Laws require a certain number of square feet per cell, as well as natural light in the cell block area. And instead of hallways lined with cells, the prison is arranged in what is called a pod system. Jailers will oversee the prisoners from a central area with lots of windows. The supervisors discussed their concerns that the doors of the control area may limit the vision of the jailers; the question of how much of the jail the jailers can see will be more thoroughly answered as the construction process continues.

Each prisoner will have his (or her) cell area, which is big enough for a bed and restroom facilities. There are also day rooms attached to each cell, but shared by other cells. A large indoor exercise area fills one corner of the prison area.

The blocks needed for the completion of the prison area come into the building via those double plywood panel doors. Workers bring them in to bring them up to room temperature before cutting them. Some of the block comes already covered with decorative surfaces.

Ironically, the only vertical metal in place in the LEC during this stage of the construction is in the area where the sheriff and his deputies will work. Their offices are mostly framed with those metal studs.

Petermeier said the contractors told him the block work inside the building should be done by the end of 2010, but it is not. Yet, he said, he expects the building to be ready by its target date of May 1.