MUNCIE — A state jail inspector says if Delaware County doesn't do something about its outdated, overcrowded jail, a lawsuit is sure to happen.
"If they don't decide to build a jail, they're going to face a class action lawsuit, from inmates, or it could be from the staff," Chance Sweat, an Indiana Department of Correction jail inspector, said.
But Sweat told the Star Press that he doesn't agree with every element of the jail plan underway by the county commissioners.
Sweat is responsible for getting the ball rolling on a new jail in Delaware County. In August 2017, Sweat wrote to local officials after he conducted a jail inspection, warning that the county faced a critical incident with the jail in the Justice Center.
Sheriff Ray Dudley and the commissioners, the latter having authority to build a jail, cited Sweat's letter in proposing a new jail. Dudley favored a plan that would see a jail built in a county shell building on the city's southwest side. But the commissioners favored, and are moving ahead with, a plan to locate a jail in the former ASONS building, also the former Wilson Middle School, on the far south side. They bought the building for $2.9 million.
The commissioners have hired an Indianapolis firm, BW Development, which has put together a jail-building plan that says a jail with 500 to 750 inmate beds can be built in the former ASONS building for $45 million.