Brookings county jail expansion on track to be done October 5th

Brookings, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – The Brookings County Detention Center is about to reach a major milestone in its $15 million expansion project started back in September.

Outer walls of the facility are expected to go up by March 12th. Staff members of the Brookings County Detention Center have been wanting an expansion for years.

“It’s exciting, it’s exciting because we were almost to a point, it was like were never going to get it,” said Bart Sweebe, Jail Administrator for Brookings County Detention Center.

With the new expansion, there will be 84 total beds, a new medical room, along with having a cafeteria for the first time.

“Additional classrooms, additional areas we can get additional programming for the inmates, there will be a computer area, where we are looking to be able to do GED classes and other types of training for the inmates, to utilize and make them have a little bit better success once they’re released,” said Sweebe.

With all the new areas, some new rules and regulations will need to be made for the Detention Center staff.

“We got a lot of different things were adding, including the two rooms we have for safe rooms, we got some areas we are going to be putting in for juvenile temporary holds, so all of that is going to cause extra policies to follow for our staff,” said Sweebe.

With the COVID pandemic still on many people’s minds, there will be some new steps to keep inmates safe from potential health hazards, like new quarantine cells in case someone does become sick.

“For the new jail we are looking at increasing our ability to filter the air systems better so that we can keep air filtering in between cell blocks and infecting other cell blocks and other cellmates,” said Sweebe. View the story on Dakota News Now.