... or save jail for real criminals and have the fool-criminals re-pay society in a different way.

Welcome to overspend, give money away to contractors because they demand more than their bid, lay the bill for all of their mistakes on homeowners and small business
Guilford county!

Cost per bed? Not a good way to look at the cost of the building. Find another way to equate your idea of luxury with barely getting it done.

Our society says we have to make our jails better than home. It is our people who say we need to add the ammenities to the poor desperadoes who find themselves in our loving care.

Why not convert an unused building into a jail? Why not make jail a bad thing?

I'm no expert in jail construction, but I do know jails are more expensive to build than your typical Hilton. And it's not because mints for jail pillows are so much pricier than they are for hotel pillows.

It's because jails include redundant security features and sophisticated electronics, not just to keep the prisoners where they belong, safe from each other and from us, but also to keep the staff safe from them.

The Cabarrus County jail expansion will cost 75 million dollars and house 600 inmates ($130,000 per). Compared to that, the Guilford jail proposal at 100 million to house 1,000 ($100,000 per) looks like a bargain.

In Cincinnati (whose county includes 1.8 million people versus Guilford's 1.1), they're considering a jail that would cost $425 million in total debt and construction costs for an 1800 inmate facility ($230,000 per).

Sheriff Barnes has gone on record endorsing a plan to consolidate the High Point and Greensboro jails into a single complex near the airport. That idea was also endorsed by Dennis Kimme of Kimme Associates whose jail report was ordered by the Guilford County commissioners. Skip Alston rejected that report. Instead of adding jail space, he thinks Guilford County should return arrestees to society while encouraging them to enter ramped up drug rehab and medical substance recovery programs. The costs of that option would be immense and would provide Guilford County with a fresh stream of freed felons.

Ultimately, this is a decision for the Commissioners, not the Sheriff. Sheriff Barnes is doing the responsible thing by advocating what he knows is a very expensive- and thus very unpopular- jail expansion. Nobody wants to spend good money on jails, but as the County has grown, so has its need for jail space.

If BJ had his druthers, people wouldn't commit crimes and we could downsize. A maximum security phone booth would be a great thing.

If we do nothing, the Feds will come in and do it for us, presenting us with a bill that would make $100 million seem like a tithe.

It's about more than just the cost of building the thing.

Put it near the airport and you've got the ongoing costs of transporting prisoners there. Not to mention transporting the inmates to and from the courthouse. The ideal location is Randleman road or the east side of downtown. Not only are property values low, but it's close to the courthouse and a large percentage of the crime.