Coles County jail is busting at its seams with prisoners and is expected to continue to grow, leaving county officials with the question of expansion of the jail or building an additional jail.

Currently, the problem of overcrowding in the jail is evident. The jail, 701 Seventh St., houses 150 prisoners; however, at peak times such as the weekend it can exceed 162 prisoners causing “total chaos,” trying to provide beds and cells for the prisoners, Sgt. Terry Tillis said.

“It’s exploded in the last year and it’s not going to slow down,” Tillis said. “It’s just out of control right now.”

The explosion, Tillis said, is caused by methamphetamine users and dealers throughout the Midwest. Not only is the number of users and dealers increasing, but also the number of police busts, sending them to county jail. The majority of the current 133 prisoners in county jail were put away for methamphetamine charges.

For the past year and a half, the Coles County Sheriff and Law Enforcement Committee put together projections of the rise in prisoners, which they found is not slowing down anytime soon, make the need for jail expansion or building a new jail a timely issue, said Robert Webb, vice chair of the Coles County Board.

“They show it won’t be too long until there’s more people than cells,” Webb said.

That rise is connected to the boom of methamphetamine producers and users, which are commonly found in rural areas like Charleston, Tillis said.

But thanks to the East Central Illinois Drug Task Force, methamphetamine labs and users are getting caught and being put away, which has created the new problem of overcrowded jails.

The Coles County jail has exceeded its limits of 150 prisoners before and

will in the future, which they handle by violating standards of the Illinois Department of Corrections; however, state inspectors are aware of the overcrowding problem.

Prisoners are separated first by gender, which Tillis said is never violated. But after separation, inmates are classified by their court process, that is, whether they are awaiting trial or have been sentenced. Then, they are separated according to their offense.

The classifications of offenses are violent felons, non-violent felons, misdemeanors, traffic offenses and civil offenses. With the overcrowding, Tillis said the jail is forced to break those classifications to fit in the extra prisoners. That can prove to be a difficult task.

“It becomes a chess game, ” he said. “We are violating them in the most appropriate way we can.”

Furthermore, because the gender classification cannot be broken at times there will be no female cells available but six or seven male cells open. So if more female inmates are brought in there is no room for them.

“We just need a bigger jail,” Tillis said. “We have no choice but to add on to the jail.”

Not only do officers mix inmates of different classifications, but they bring in portable bunks for prisoners, and have tried to rent beds from neighboring counties. But, he said, all surrounding counties are struggling with the same overcrowding problem and have no beds to spare, making this not only a Coles County problem, but a thorn in the side of jails across the Midwest, Tillis said.

One of the main issues behind the decision process of the overcrowding is how to save costs and not juggle with taxes to come up with the funds, Webb said.

When the current jail was built more than 10 years ago, the county funded its construction by housing federal prisoners the government paid the county to hold.

The jail currently houses federal prisoners such as Immigration Naturalization Services inmates, for which the county is compensated. If the county decides to expand or build a new jail, Webb said the building will be built to house more prisoners than needed.

That way, Webb said, eventually, if the projections of rising prisoners are correct, the county will need that space. In the meantime, while it fills up, the county can house federal prisoners to compensate for the costs of adding on to the jail or building an additional jail.