CADIZ — Gov. Mike DeWine visited Cadiz for the official opening of the new Harrison County Jail on Tuesday.

While DeWine said that it’s too bad that society needs jails, he noted the brand new facility is going to save a lot of money and time for Harrison County.

“The thing that happens when you don’t have a new jail, you have to transport prisoners all the time. When you do that, you lose an officer who leaves the county and may go 400 miles sometimes. So the security of the people of Harrison County is much better when you’ve got a new jail like this. Then you do not have to transport people,” DeWine said.

“The other thing is, we have so many people going to our jails with mental health problems, sadly, who have drug addiction problems,” he continued. “And, again, a new jail gives you the ability to handle them better and hopefully get better results when they come out.”

The new jail facility includes a 22,000-square-foot addition plus renovations to the existing former SSG George J. Conaway U.S. Army Reserve Center. It will have 60 beds among six different housing units for separation and classification, two classrooms, outdoor recreation, counseling offices, a full-service kitchen and laundry and two sally ports for transport and reception, as well as a visitation unit.

“This was really a cooperative effort. I was happy, on behalf of the state and state legislature, to put in a significant amount of money in it, over $9 million. But it takes a real local effort. It takes everybody, it takes the county commissioners, the sheriff — in this case it takes two sheriffs — so many people to get this done. And so this is really a beauty gathering today and coming together to celebrate this,” DeWine said.

The project was started by retired Harrison County sheriff Joe Myers and carried on by current Sheriff Mark Touville.

“Our existing jail now was built in the 1900s, so it’s approximately 98 years old. There’s been a need for this jail for decades. Each sheriff behind me has made attempts to get a new jail, but retired sheriff Joe Myers was able to get that job done,” Touville said.

When speaking about the abundance of support he’s received while getting this new facility up and operational, Touville said describing it as overwhelming would be an understatement.

“​​Currently, we don’t offer any services to help in terms of people with addiction, mental illness and things like that, because most of our prisoners are outsourced to different counties, such as Monroe County and Jefferson County. So as far as programming, there’s no programming here at the jail level. That would have to come directly from the court and be outpatient once they are out of incarceration,” Touville said. “But with this new facility, it will enable us to bring those services to the inmates that are actually here serving time, rather than wait ’til the release.”

He added that he estimates the new jail will be accepting inmates around August after the corrections officers have additional training.

“We have training coming up for our corrections officers in July, and once those training sessions are completed, then we will do a dry run in this facility for one to two weeks, once comfortable. And then we’ll bring our inmates back from Monroe County,” the sheriff explained. “Now, my existing corrections officers and my new hires are all going to Monroe County. Monroe County trains our people there, and they are housing our prisoners as well. So essentially, our COs are taking care of our prisoners, just not in our new facility yet. Once our new facility is open, then they’ll all be brought back.”

DeWine added that a lot of work from several different people was crucial to making this new facility possible. He said the reason for his attendance at the ribbon cutting ceremony was to congratulate everyone who made the new facility possible.

“This was some of the first money we got out. We follow that as we look at other jails around the state. We’re helping other other communities, but really this is one of the first ones that we were able to do, and we think it’s very, very cool,” DeWine said.

“The other thing that I know from my own experience as a prosecutor and then attorney general… if you have to move people around, you have to take them to another jail, well, that takes an officer. That officer may be coming off the road, or maybe he or she may be coming from someplace else, and this jail should alleviate at least a good part of that problem.”