The Chesterfield Detention Center was built in 1971. That makes it old and outdated by contemporary standards for jails.
“We’ve outgrown the building,” said Sheriff Cambo Streater.
As the South Carolina side of the Charlotte metro grows, infrastructure, including that meant to house people in incarceration, is not keeping up. Streater said he has had to move 15 female inmates from the Detention Center – 15 is about the number of incarcerated women the county typically has at a given moment – to jails in three other counties.
Those are Darlington, Marlboro, and Sumter. Each, Streater said, accepted five inmates.
The county recently shuttered its work camp program to relieve overcrowding pressures as well. Inmates in the program had been housed in a separate building that holds 32 beds. That building and those beds – or, “pods” – will now house more male inmates, Streater said.
The County Council, meanwhile, is looking to raise money to build a new detention center.Streater said he hopes a mechanism to find funding is at least in place by year’s end.