WASHBURN - The old McLean County lockup in Washburn is going high tech.

It's been a century since the county had a new jail and many months of planning and more than a year of construction will end fairly soon.

While the wrecking ball erased history, it also erased a jail that might have served Mayberry just fine, but a bustling energy community on a four-lane highway? Not so much.

The new jail should be done by the end of January and allowing for staff training time, housing prisoners by March.

With a price tag of $3.3 million, it has a pleasing stucco and arched window exterior, but it's all serious business inside. A high-tech, all-glass dispatch center from which personnel can lock and unlock cells by touching a computer screen is a contrast to the other end of the latest in jail technology. That would be the beds, mortared cinder blocks, topped by concrete and softened with a mattress.

It is a jail, after all, and for some prisoners, it'll be home for up to a year, with the county's new Class 1 jail status.

Depending on the prisoner, he or she will be held in a small two-room pod, or a four-bed dormitory. Prisoners will have access to a gym, a library and a day room.

An industrial kitchen with a large convection oven will easily handle the up to 840 ready-to-serve meals that prisoners will eat each week. Doors that cost $4,000 a pop for the steel and electronic locking systems will provide security, along with cameras pretty much everywhere.

There's a special room for legal conferences with wiring for video and sound links to district and federal court hearings, a potential time and money saver.

The upgrade from old, cramped, outdated and inappropriate spaces was long overdue.

"It'll be exciting," said sheriff Don Charging.

His department will be housed on the second floor, with a dedicated forensic lab and climate-controlled evidence room and a wired up conference room that could be used as a command center for county government in an emergency.

The jail is on the main floor and can house from 20 to 24 prisoners, with room for 41 if all beds were bunked, though a daily average of a dozen prisoners is anticipated.

For the first time, McLean County also will have a place to hold minors and a trained attendant for up to 96 hours for teens who might be runaways or have other enforcement issues.

State's attorney Ladd Erickson said the juvenile facility will be shared among McLean, Mercer, Oliver and Sheridan counties, saving all of them the expense of using and transporting to similar set ups in Bismarck or Dickinson.

Erickson said a committee came up with a design that emphasizes security and can be operated by one jailer and one dispatcher on most shifts.

"We expect to be accountable to our business plan," he said.

Since September 2007, when the old jail literally bit the dust, McLean County's prisoners have been transported to Mercer County for a daily fee of $45 each.

Erickson said the county budgeted $150,000 for that expense and will have spent just about every penny of it by the time it can house its own prisoners again.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)