The jails in Richmond and Scotland counties have been overcrowded for years.
An average of 150 to 165 people are held at the Scotland Detention Center each day, although the facility has a 109-bed capacity, county commissioners told the Border Belt Independent.
In neighboring Richmond County, the detention center is “dangerously overcrowded,” according to a 2022 report from the advocacy group Disability Rights North Carolina. Jail inspectors said in 2018 that the severe overcrowding created a “potential unsafe condition for detention officers and inmates.”
“This overcrowding is a huge risk,” said Ed O’Neal, vice chair of the Scotland County Board of Commissioners. “When you have inmates sleeping on two- or three-inch thick pads on the floor, that’s not good.”
Scotland County officials, led by O’Neal, are interested in building a regional jail that would adequately serve both counties. The Scotland commission agreed last month to put out a request for proposals from companies to conduct a feasibility study. Next month, the Richmond County Board of Commissioners could consider allocating $35,000 to help fund the study after tabling the discussion during its March 10 meeting.
Richmond and Scotland counties would split the cost of the new jail, which O’Neal estimates would be between $80 million and $140 million to accommodate at least 400 beds. The feasibility study would provide a more accurate price tag, he said.
The facility would be built somewhere near the county line. Scotland officials are talking to Hamlet leaders about using the city’s wastewater treatment plant as part of the new facility’s infrastructure, O’Neal said.
Ideally, O’Neal said, the facility would have a satellite courtroom so sheriff’s deputies from both counties could spend less time transporting people to courthouses in Laurinburg and Rockingham.
“This solution is going to give us the right-sized facility,” O’Neal said. “I think we’re going to do it at a cost that is easier for both counties to bear.”
Richmond pays between $50 and $60 per person each day to house its overflow of incarcerated people at other facilities, said Jeff Smart, chair of the Richmond County Board of Commissioners. The county is on track to spend $1.2 million this fiscal year and spent $800,000 last year, he said.
Some state lawmakers have said they are interested in a Scotland-Richmond regional jail and would support state funding for the project, according to O’Neal.
“If there’s no help from the legislature, federal or on the state level, then we can’t do it,” Smart said of building a regional facility. “I’m not willing to put our citizens in that much debt.”
Smart said he hopes commissioners will visit other regional jails and decide to invest in a feasibility study.
“Eventually it’s going to be a necessity to have a jail because the one we have is inadequate,” Smart said. “It becomes, at some point, not repairable.”
But there are skeptics. Richmond County Commissioner Justin Dawkins said it might be cheaper to keep paying to send inmates out of the county than to build a new facility.
Scotland County Commissioner Tim Ivey said he is worried about infrastructure costs and how the facility would be governed.
Ivey said he talked to some Martin County commissioners who expressed concerns about the Bertie-Martin Regional Jail in the northeastern corner of the state. There are plans to expand the facility to also serve Washington County.
“When they first started, everything of course runs perfectly,” Ivey said. “But 10 years down the road–when commissioner boards change, and sheriffs change, and even prosecutorial districts change–there’s a lot of things that could happen that would make this not such a great idea.”
Scotland County most recently changed prosecutorial districts in 2021. It is now part of District 21, which also includes Richmond County. If the districts change, Ivey said, some people held in a regional facility would have to be transported to courthouses in other counties.
“It takes staff to do that, which takes away deputies on the road or people working at the jail,” Ivey said.
Scotland County’s founding charter would also have to be changed, Ivey said, because it says a county jail must be within one mile of Laurinburg.
Scotland commissioners are also considering renovating the existing jail. They agreed to issue requests for companies to conduct feasibility studies for updating the jail and also for building a regional facility.
The Scotland County Detention Center would have room for another 15 to 30 people if an unused portion of the fourth floor is renovated, Public Buildings Director Mike McGirt told commissioners in February.
N.C. Rep. Garland Pierce, a Democrat who represents Scotland and Hoke counties, requested $80 million from the state in March 2025 to build a new courthouse and county jail. The Scotland County Courthouse doesn’t have enough space to accommodate all of the cases heard there, County Manager April Snead told commissioners.
The General Assembly has not yet passed a budget for this fiscal year, which began in July, so Pierce’s request is stalled.
“We’re not going to get fully funded,” Ivey said, “so we’ve got to look at how we’re going to finance this thing, whether it’s a regional jail or a local one.”
Ivey wants the board to start allocating money now to avoid any sticker shock once construction begins. However, he said, any groundbreaking is still years away.
“We’ve got to quit kicking this can down the road,” Ivey said. “I know we’re going to do these studies, which hopefully won’t take long, but I don’t want to be sitting here a year from now and still having the same discussion about what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.”