Rhea County Commissioner Bill HollinDAYTON, Tenn. – Overcrowding at the Rhea County Jail has officials considering the old hospital as a detention facility.
Architect David Brown, hired to prepare a study on whether the county needs a new jail or justice center, said the former Rhea County Medical Center – specifically its nursing home facility – could be converted to a minimum security jail, according to County Commissioner Bill Hollin.
“He said he hadn’t seen a better site in Rhea County to put a jail,” Hollin said. “I’d like to put on the agenda to talk with him, to go up and look at [the hospital site].”
Some progress toward a decision needs to be made, he said, because officials from the state are coming back to Rhea in January and “if we haven’t done anything” the county will face decertification of the jail again.
Decertification could mean the loss of the jail’s insurance coverage or an increase in those rates, officials said. It does not affect day-to-day operations.