SULLIVAN - When the Moultrie County Jail was built in 1911, the sheriff lived on site, and until the early 1970s, his wife cooked the prisoners' meals.
Needless to say, times have changed at the Moultrie County Jail.
"It's been way overdue," Sheriff Jeff Thomas said Friday at the county's new jail, just off of Illinois 32 in northwest Sullivan.
Major construction is finished on the building, and the main work remaining is sewer hookup and phone services.
Thomas said he hoped those would be done by mid-August and the department would be operating from the new building in September.
Space and control are the new jail's defining features. The building has triple the space of the old jail on Hamilton Street and updated security features, Thomas said.
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Here's a look at some of the differences between the two:
n Currently, nine deputies share one office. In the new building, they'll each have their own cubicle.
n The waiting area in the old jail is little more than a few feet in front of the administrative assistant's desk. In the new building, there's a spacious lobby with chairs for waiting, and a window separates the administrative assistant from visitors.
n In the old jail, records are stored in a room that only can be accessed through a bathroom. The new jail features large filing cabinets in the administrative assistant's area and numerous storage rooms.
n Meetings in the old jail are held in what used to be a small bedroom, which isn't air-conditioned. The new jail has a training room with about a dozen desks. The room has storage for extra chairs in case the room needs to be set up auditorium-style, Thomas said. He also said the room could be used for an emergency operations center in case of a major event.
n Up to 26 prisoners can be held in the current jail. The new jail's capacity will be 54, with the option to expand to 70, Thomas said.
n When bringing prisoners to the new jail, officers may have an easier time with unruly ones, Thomas said. The building features a sallyport, where officers can pull their cars in, unlock a door to a holding cell, unload a prisoner and drive out.
The old jail does not have a sallyport, and officers sometimes have to maneuver through multiple doors with a prisoner.
n Visitors will talk with inmates via video conferencing in the new jail, Thomas said. The system limits access to secure areas of the jail, and the monitors will switch off after 20 minutes, automatically ending the visit, he said.
He said in the current jail, visitors walk right up to the cell door and talk to inmates through wire mesh.
n In the new jail, the control center for radio communications and dispatch has a view of all the cells, plus a video system that can show areas inside and outside the jail.
"This is just so nice compared to what we have," Thomas said.
The control room also has windows that allow officers to see out but inmates can't see in, Thomas said.
"We have such a tremendous amount of control over the building," Thomas said.
That control extends right down to the number of times prisoners can flush their toilets and how long the water runs in the showers, he said.
Funding for the new jail came from a grant through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. The grant funded 90 percent of the project.
Thomas said the value of the building now is about $6.5 million, and the county's share is only about $1 million.
"That's pretty phenomenal," he said.
An open house for the jail is planned for late August.
The fate of the old jail is yet to be determined, Thomas said.
Lisa Bartelt can be reached at
lbartelt@jg-tc.com or 238-6858.
