With a new laundry room and jail cell taking over an old courtroom, the Coles County Detention Center is more immediately equipped and accommodated to handle the overcrowding of inmates as a result of the “methamphetamine crisis.”

Three industrial-size washers and dryers have been purchased to replace the old regular washer and dryer that was running 24 hours a day, seven days a week to accommodate the number of inmates, which has tripled since 1974.

The new washers cost about $23,000, which Sgt. Terry Tillis said will come from an account from the sheriff’s department “at no cost of the taxpayers.” The laundry equipment is going into the old judge’s chambers and the old courtroom has been turned into an eight-man jail cell. The new facilities are expected to be finished Dec. 1.

The new jail cell has been built as a temporary fix to an ever-increasing problem of overcrowding in the detention center. The overcrowding is a result of the current overload of prisoners from a rise in methamphetamine production and use in the Midwest, Tillis said.

“With the methamphetamine crisis going on, any extra beds are welcomed,” he said.

The Coles County jail has already exceeded its limit of prisoners several times and frequently breaks classification regulations of which prisoners can share a cell according to their crime.

The jail, at 701 Seventh St., houses 150 prisoners; however, at peak times such as the weekend, it can exceed 162 prisoners, causing chaos in trying to provide beds and cells for the prisoners, Tillis has said.

In the past few years, the East Central Illinois Drug Task Force has been working under the project Crystal Clean to wipe out the increase in production and use of methamphetamine in the area.

Not only are the numbers of users and dealers increasing, but also the number of police busts, sending them to county jail and overcrowding it. The majority of the current 133 prisoners in county jail were put away for methamphetamine charges, according to Tillis.

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 any time soon, making the need for jail expansion or building a new jail a timely issue.

The transformation of the old courtroom into a laundry room and jail cell is one immediate solution to house a few more prisoners, but with officials not expecting overcrowding to end soon, it cannot be considered permanent.

“It’s the cheapest way to expand immediately,” Tillis said.

The old courtroom was previously used for high-risk inmate hearings, but with the construction of the new facilities, those cases have been moved to the courthouse. The movement of high-risk inmate hearings to the courthouse is beneficial for the attorneys who, because of their workloads, were consistently late to hearings at the jail.

However, Tillis said for the officers, it is more difficult to escort the high-risk prisoners to the courthouse using the underground tunnel because more officers are needed. But he said the new facilities are a good trade-off for the added need of security.