The new Greene County Jail is now complete. Greene County Sheriff Dan Langston received the keys to the new jail and is getting ready to move inmates into the new facility. The Paragould Daily Press reports the authorities will start transferring inmates to the new jail next week, only allowing a few inmates at a time to go into the new facility. Officers are doing final checks of the jail this week to make sure it is ready to house the inmates. The new 75,000-square-foot jail will house about 500 inmates. Proect Manager Dave Tierney says the jail is constructed in the shape of a wagon wheel, which will allow for more visibility of the individual pods which will hold inmates. According to Tierney, each pod is a self-contained unit that consists of sleeper cells and a day room. Each of the inmate’s cells is constructed with 3/16 inch steel. The door frames are concrete and the doors are two inches thick. Every cell reportedly will be treated as an individual unit and can be removed, if needed. Each dayroom has video conferencing, which will serve for visitation, eliminating face-to-face visitation at the jail. The old jail will be renovated and used for administrative needs. A sales tax increase was passed by Greene County voters in 2012 to help finance the construction of the jail.
Johnathan Reaves is the faculty advisor and editor-in-chief for Delta Digital News Service and the former News Director for KASU Public Radio. As part of an Air Force Family, he moved to Arkansas from Minot, North Dakota in 1986. He was first bitten by the radio bug after he graduated from Gosnell High School in 1992. While working on his undergraduate degree, he worked at KOSE, a small 1,000 watt AM commercial station in Osceola, Arkansas. Upon graduation from Arkansas State University in 1996 with a degree in Radio-Television Broadcast News, he decided that he wanted to stay in radio news. He moved to Stuttgart, Arkansas and worked for East Arkansas Broadcasters as news director and was there for 16 years.