ELKINS, W.Va. (AP) - The Randolph County Jail, which has only temporarily held inmates awaiting court hearings for the last 12 years, is undergoing the beginning stage of a potential multi-year project to remodel the facility.
The Randolph County Sheriff’s Office, including the court security officers it employs, along with a Department of Corrections inmate work crew and North Central Community Corrections program participants are working on demolition of the building, much of which has been destroyed by water damage.
“Community Corrections is doing most of the painting and cleaning, and the DOC is doing most of the demolition and construction,” Randolph County Sheriff Mark T. Brady said during an interview and walkthrough of the facility in late May.
“All this work is being done by the DOC work crew. We are trying to get it all back to the basics and then come up with a plan of what to do with it and what’s the best uses of it,” Brady said. “These guys have done this with nothing but crowbars and hammers.”
Court security officers started the project by cleaning up and throwing out items that were deemed to be “no good.”
Because of the work being performed by inmates and those sentenced to fulfill community service hours through the NCCC program, the work being done has not required taxpayer funds.
“There has been no expenditure of any outside cost,” Brady said. “All the labor has been done by the CSO’s, Community Corrections and DOC, other than we bought tools to work with.”
Brady explained the damage to the building was sustained because of issues that prevent the gutters from draining properly, which has led to leaks inside the building and interior walls.
“You have to fix the gutter system to stop the problem. You work from the top down. You fix all that - you clean things up, which is what we’re doing,” Brady said.
“We’re cleaning up, we’re tearing out the walls where they need to be, we’re getting it down to the basic structure. Then, we come in here and design the place to how you want it and make a plan to redo it.”
A large number of documents, records and files that were in the basement from all county offices were damaged by water.
“The further down you go the worse the damage becomes because the water continues to come down and this is an area that’s really been damaged,” Brady said of the room where many of the files were stored.
Brady said he hopes to see the building be used for something productive in the future.
“It’s a neat old building that just needs restored to its old luster and to get some use out of it,” Brady said. “To me it’s sad to see the building being run down and dilapidated. The longer you leave it not maintained the more expensive it is to fix back up.”
Eventually, county officials may look at attempting to have the building recognized as a historical landmark.
“We’ll try to work out the details of that later on,” Brady said. “We just want to be good stewards of this as a taxpayer building. We are part of the community here, part of the Wees Historic District. We want to make sure we are being good neighbors to everyone else that is located here.”
Currently the facility is only used to house inmates from area jails who come to Elkins for court hearings. Brady noted there are no plans for the future to house inmates at the jail full-time.
“The only thing we use it for now is the Tygart Valley Regional Jail will bring inmates up to court,” Brady said. “We house them here throughout the day and we take them to and from court. At the end of the day, the regional jail comes and picks them back up. We don’t feed them here. They bring their lunches from the regional jail with them.”
The jail, which was constructed between 1909 and 1910, was split into two sections - a civilian side and a jail side.
The civilian side was where the jailer and his family lived. It included a kitchen where an individual, typically the jailers wife, would prepare meals for inmates housed there. The kitchen wall had a barred opening in it that allowed for meal trays to be passed through to the jail section of the building.
For a substantial period, the jailer also served as a dispatcher for the deputies in the county.
Dispatchers would do all communications for deputies, Mill Creek Police Department, Randolph County EMS and fire companies. Deputies were based out of the main courthouse at that time.
The jailer would not carry keys into general population, so they would be passed to the Communications Center dispatcher, who had a control board to open doors throughout the facility for him.
On the second floor, above the holding room and civilian kitchen, were four, 4-person cells where juveniles and females were housed until a ruling was made by the West Virginia Supreme Court that juveniles could not be held in the same facility as adults.
One section of the jail area has four individual and separated 2-person cells - where inmates are still housed awaiting court hearings - while other areas had four, 2-person bunks in an open area as opposed to being individually celled off in pairs.
Inmates were allowed to roam freely within the “pod” or common area until 11 p.m.; at this time, they would have to be locked in the cells until 7 a.m., when breakfast was served. They were also required to keep the facility clean, including sweeping and mopping the cell areas.
Each day, inmates would get one hour of outside recreation time. If weather did not permit, the third floor of the facility was used as a recreation room and included workout equipment, a television, a telephone and other various amenities.
“When it was raining outside they wouldn’t allow them to go outside for their recreation so they would come up here,” Brady said of the third floor indoor recreation room. “They had weights up here and they had a TV up here they could watch.”
In a closet area of the third floor, they also stored inmate uniforms, shoes, bedding and other items.
The jail averaged 20-32 inmates at any one time but could house roughly 40 inmates at maximum capacity, Brady said. Toward the end of the facility being utilized, it was able to house more individuals because they had “trustee” inmates that were able to live on the third floor of the civilian side of the jail.
Inmates were not classified, outside of individuals who had to be placed in protective custody, meaning felony and misdemeanor offenders could be housed in the same cell, regardless of charges.
When the facility was in operation, all the medical care and food services were provided in-house. The facility housed federal, state and county inmates.
“It was a pretty big operation,” Brady, who worked at the facility in the mid-1980s, said.
At a later date, a fire escape was required to be added onto the jail section of the building.
The last group of inmates in the county jail were transported to Tygart Valley Regional Jail in August 2005. The new E-911 center, which was previously housed at the jail, also moved to its current location of 30 Randolph Ave., Suite No. 1.
The basement of the facility also served as the Randolph County Office of Emergency Management. Similar to the documents from county offices, many of the items in the original OEM office were also destroyed.
“It’s just a Taj Mahal of stuff left over from the old jail that we’re going to clean out what we can salvage and maybe have a sale,” Brady said. “We will sell what we can and other stuff we are going to get rid of.”
In the 1970’s the probation office was also housed in the jail building.
A large number of jail registry books and records of inmates were found undamaged with some dating back as far as 1913.
Brady said bringing this building back is something he believes needs to be done and is looking for community input on the project.
“It’s just something that needs done. It’s a community and a taxpayer building. It needs refurbished,” Brady said. “What I want to get out to the public is that we want the public’s input, we want their support and urge the community to track us in what we are trying to do.
“That’s what we’re trying to do, is drum up community support to get behind us. If they think we are crazy, then tell us. If they think ’Don’t be doing this stuff, it’s crazy, you shouldn’t be over there doing this,’ tell us,” Brady said. “But I don’t think so. I think they will probably be supportive of us and what we are trying to do in restoring this historic grand structure and getting it back to the glory it used to be in.”
Randolph County Commissioner Mark Scott, who Brady said has been integral in the project, said there is no specific plan for the facility at this point but agreed it is something that needed to be done.
“We really haven’t entered into this restoration with a specific plan for the office space. I walked through the building with (CSO) Jim Bibey first and a couple days later the sheriff and I came over,” Scott said. “We saw an opportunity, with the Department of Corrections, to be able to come in and start the work of renovating this beautiful building. It’s historic and it’s also structurally sound but it had some work that needed to be done, and with the Department of Corrections help, we’re able to get it done for minimal cost to the taxpayers.
“As we looked at this building, we don’t necessarily have any specific plans of what we’re going to do with the building once the renovation is complete but we’ve got an opportunity to get that work started so the building doesn’t dilapidate any more than where it was,” he continued. “We had some structural issues when we first started this and worked to address those. That’s really what started this project - seeing a building that wasn’t being fully utilized, had some small issues and we were able to get the Department of Corrections to help us. That’s what started this all.”
Scott also commended the work of the DOC crew to be able to accomplish so much in such a short time.
“We’re very impressed with the work. This crew is skilled. They know what they’re doing and they’re well supervised,” Scott added. “They are getting the job done. We’re giving them the parameters of what they do when they come in at the beginning of the day and they work hard all day long. I was incredibly impressed to see after just three days’ worth of work how much demo they were able to do inside and the work just continued. These guys are working hard and doing a great job.”
Brady again stressed the potential he sees in the building and hopes the community and elected officials can work together to bring the project to fruition.
“Commissioner Scott and I, and everyone who has been involved in this thing, sees a lot of potential for the use of the building and are now just trying to get down to the basics, get the renovations started, get the demolition done and get down to the basics,” Brady said. “Then, I think we will all meet together sometime later, get input back from the community and get input back from all the other elected officials about what is our best use for this building so we can come up with a good game plan.”
Scott added that while the building is being utilized to house inmates for court he still feels it is being “underutilized” so he is hopeful the future could hold a number of options to efficiently use the facility.
“The back of the building is currently being utilized to house prisoners as they’re waiting for their court time so it’s being utilized, it’s just being underutilized. What the sheriff and I saw when we started looking at this is this a great building that could have some great uses down the road, whatever it’s determined to be used for,” Scott said. “I’m excited to see the renovation being done at a low cost for the taxpayer but at the same time getting quality work. It looks fantastic. What it looked like when we first went in there to where it is now, it’s night and day.”
Scott called the project “exciting” and a “good use of taxpayer funds” going forward.
“This has definitely been a joint effort. Commissioner (Mike) Taylor was the one that was initially contacted by the Department of Corrections and we’ve all collaborated on this together to make this happen,” Scott said. “To see this work being done, it’s exciting. It’s a good use of taxpayer funds and we are getting a lot of work done at minimal cost to the taxpayer.”
Brady said he is the last surviving currently active RCSO member who worked for the jail.
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