Arrival of cells marks jail progress

The trucks began arriving near the end of last month, transporting jail cells from Baldwin, Georgia. The cells came six to a semitrailer, three trucks per arrival.

As of this week, there are 70 jail cells consolidated onto the grounds of the new $75 million Justice Center, which is under construction along Carlton County Road 61 in Carlton.

Some of the cells are already installed, stacked to create two floors, and awaiting the construction of a second-level mezzanine in the men's unit.

Jail administrator Paul Coughlin met the Pine Knot on Monday to discuss the cells and the construction of the jail portion of a Justice Center that will also house a new courthouse and the Carlton County Sheriff's Office.

"You can see the (cinder) blocks on the floor," Coughlin said. "That's where they're going to create cell blocks, where the walls will go in, basically so it's not one big unit like a prison."

Coughlin was appointed by the county to be the project manager throughout construction of the Justice Center. For the past year, day-to-day operations at the jail in downtown Carlton have been ceded to assistant jail administrator Jason Wilmes.

Construction started on the new 80-bed jail and Justice Center with the first concrete pour last September. All the slab on grade flooring is now completed and most exterior walls are up. There's a pergola still to come that will make up the public entrance facing the roadway; it'll be constructed out of timbers cut from the property.

It's a massive facility that fills a healthy portion of the 19 acres upon which it's situated. Coughlin estimated it will open next fall, about a year from now.

He reported the arrival of the jail cells to the county board earlier this month. In getting up close with the prefabricated boxes, one thing stands out: there are no bars on these jail cells.

"Jail cells today are very different from what they were in 1979," Coughlin said.

Made from cold-rolled steel by SteelCell of North America, a single-person cell features a bed, toilet, sink and shower all in one. Inmates will be limited to three 5-minute pulses of shower water.

The grab handles around the accessible cells are all sealed, so that nobody can tie anything onto them. It's the same with the no-bars concept.

"They're completely anti-ligature, so there's nowhere for anybody to tie off on anything," Coughlin said. "It's so we can help with inmates who become suicidal or have suicidal ideation. By having the ability to have anti-ligature, staff between rounds aren't worried about them tying something off."

Even the towel hooks within the cells collapse when too much pressure is applied.

Built as a story-and-a-half, the jail space is vast. Cells for the 16-bed justice-involved females wing have yet to be installed. Special management cells, with extra windows for better staff observation, are in place in a ground floor row.

"It's for people who are having issues," Coughlin said of the thick-pane windows, describing alcohol or drug withdrawal and behavioral or mental health symptoms. "We want to be able to observe them."

Jail is a unique place, even in terms of incarceration of any kind. A person going to prison has had time to process what led up to it. A person arriving in jail was generally pulled from their everyday life and doesn't yet have any idea how long they'll be there, Coughlin said.

"We always see people on their worst day," Coughlin said. "A lot of times in jail, that's our singular issue: working them through the condition they come in with."

The current jail inside the courthouse of Carlton County isn't well-suited for today.

"Staff fight the current building all the time," Coughlin said.

There are hallways so tight it's hard for two people to pass one another, much less an ambulance gurney. A court appearance requires an inmate to be moved three times. There's no natural light in the facility.

The new jail features a 7-foot wide corridor running through the facility for easy first responder access. There's an interview room and medical examination room. There are skylights and high windows throughout the facility, capable of filling the recreation room and other areas with sunlight.

In addition to a central command post, the wings will be isolated and each monitored by staff. The current jail requires staff to walk the whole facility.

"We'll have people staged in different locations to work the area they need to and not be responsible for the rest of the jail," Coughlin said. "When we open, hopefully we can operate the building the way it was designed."

To that end, Coughlin sought and received approval Tuesday from the county board to make conditional offers to three new staffers who can start Jan. 1. The jail is facing three retirements in 2024, and Coughlin will need the year to train all staff and new hires on operations within the new facility. For a time next year, the new jail and old one will be operating at the same time - training in the new one, operations in the old.

It's never been harder to work in a jail, Coughlin said, describing how people with chronic mental health issues often end up in jail. Indeed, there's at least one upper-level cell at the new facility that features a 12-inch floor beneath it, so that anyone hollering or acting out won't disrupt the rest of the facility.

As society moves away from mental health hospitals and prolonged civil commitments, society is trying to figure out how to create better systems of treatment. In the meantime, jail staff and administrators are confronted with behaviors that aren't based in criminalistic-thinking.

"My workers are much more in tune with behavioral health and mental health than they should ever have to be," Coughlin said, describing criminal behavior, addictive behavior and mental health issues commingling within the confines of the jail.

"If you'd told me when I started in 1995 that I'd be working with social workers and two nurses to manage a jail population that would have seemed so unrealistic," he said. "But in reality, that's what ends up happening."

As society works toward better solutions, Coughlin said he and others can be proud of how this particular construction project came together. Facing the state-mandated sunsetting of the jail, the sheriff, court administrators, and county planners and commissioners began plotting the county's largest project in a century. They kept at it through the Covid-19 pandemic, international supply chain issues, and soaring inflation rates.

"There's been a lot of work that's happened to make sure we get through, because this project can't stop," Coughlin said. "If we would have stopped and started over, all those bids we have would have been taken on anew at higher costs. Even at 10 percent that's another $7.5 million, so the fact that we are able to start this and get to where we are has really been remarkable."

The jail is being built by Adolfson & Peterson Construction of Duluth. Coughlin described 80-85 workers on the project, equating to 3,200 hours of progress work every week.

He's hoping to create a building for the next generation - one that won't have to be fought against, like the current one.

"How do we make it better for the next person?" Coughlin said.

"Everybody understands the project and how vast it is, and if you get it wrong, it hurts everybody."

Progress is at 52 percent as of his most recent report to the county board, with $1 million left in a contingency budget for things that might have been overlooked.

With that, Coughlin exited the facility and strode the length of the complex. It was a bit of a hike, given its size, but everything was coming together as planned and on schedule.