Iron County’s new jail location in the works

CEDAR CITY, Utah (ABC4/ KDXU) – Iron County has one of the oldest jail facilities in the state, according to Sheriff Ken Carpenter and he says they’ve outgrown it.

County leaders have finally narrowed down the construction site to four possible locations in their latest public hearing, but it’s been in the works for several years, according to Sheriff Carpenter.

He says his ideal location for the new facility, would be on Auto Mall Drive.

“Due to the central location, it makes it more accessible to the agencies on the north end of the county, part of it has to do with the actual property itself,” he says.

But some residents expressed their concerns at the county’s public hearing last week.

One woman says her son is a county sheriff in another state and told her it could be problematic.

“And he told me when we were talking about building this facility here, that the people to come visit or come pick up the prisoners, are often worse than the prisoners themselves; and to bring this clientele right into the middle of our city at the Auto Mall cite or at the residential area near the dog park in Enoch is just the wrong thing to do,” she says.

Sheriff Carpenter says the next county commission meeting is March 14th and officials could be coming to a final decision then.