SCOTTSBURG, Ind. (WDRB) -- Scott County's jail is getting some major upgrades, and inmates are volunteering to do the work.
Sheriff Jerry Goodin said the work is helping keep the jail open after a bad state inspection under a previous administration.
"It was in bad shape, it was beyond repair they said, it needed to be fixed up, if not they were going to condemn it," he said.
Despite a "new jail" being added on to the old building years ago, Goodin said the old jail has always been needed.
"The old jail contains our sally port where we intake prisoners, it contains the booking room where we intake prisoners and book them in, it's the area that has all of our holding cells," he explained.
The work that needed to be done to the old jail was estimated to cost more than $5 million, Goodin said, but with inmates now doing the work, the cost has dropped drastically.
"We've got less than $600,000 in this construction and we're just about done," he said.
That price tag includes a $200,000 body scanner inside the jail, which will help make sure no one is bringing in any drugs.
The upgrades include new paint, a new cell layout that increases inmate capacity, a new ceiling and new flooring. Bright orange paint on the doors and hallway railing symbolize light at the end of the tunnel and hope of a better future.
Goodin hopes the skills inmates are learning on the job can be translated into the community when they're released from jail.
Chad Arbuckle, one of the inmates working on the restoration said he has gained some valuable experience.
"We've done a lot of projects, painting, concrete, building showers, bathroom, plumbing, electrical, a lot," he said.
Scott County Jail inmate Chad Arbuckle.
And while Scott County saw a record number of arrests in 2019, Goodin said simply arresting people won't solve problems. He hopes that while in jail, inmates will learn trades that will keep them employed once they've served their time.
"We are not going to let these prisoners sit back here and do nothing," he said. "They're not going to sit back here and watch TV all day. They're not going to sit back here and eat their Pop Tarts and drink their Kool-Aid or whatever it is.
"If they're going to be in jail, they're going to get some type of knowledge, either graduating with GEDs, graduating with some type of a work skill, graduating with something so when they get out, we don't see them back here," Goodin said.
Renovation work is expected to be done soon, as state inspectors are coming back in March.
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