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Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail to Expand to House More Female Inmates


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NELSONVILLE – The Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail board approved a plan to expand the facility in order to house more female inmates.

Warden Joshua VanBibber said he’s meeting with architects this week to discuss costs of the project. VanBibber said the expansion is necessary.

“If you look at the projections of female beds over the last 15 to 20 years it’s skyrocketed so they basically are looking for ways to house more females because we currently turn away females on the daily basis,” he said. “So we’ll look at someone with a lesser crime and we’ll send somebody back to the court to be on house arrest or something like that when they should be incarcerated. So we’re looking at ways to try to fix that problem so we can house the females that need to be here in jail.”

The exact cost for the project is still unknown but VanBibber said the cost could be approximately 30 percent higher than the original $30,000 the jail intended to spend. The estimated time the project will be complete is also unknown.