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Rockingham County showed off its new jail Wednesday to the public.

The facility features state-of-the art equipment, including a video-and-monitor system so inmates can speak with visitors.

That should prevent problems caused by face-to-face meetings, where contraband could be passed to inmates during visits, said Dean Venable, spokesman for the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office.

Inmates were expected to be moved to the site last week, but officials would not disclose a move-in date, citing security.

The new jail has 108 cells and increases capacity from 90 inmates to 232. It replaces a jail built in the 1970s, Venable said.

The more than 60,000-square-foot jail was built to be environmentally friendly, with green features such as a system to catch rainwater for maintaining the natural areas outside the jail, Venable said.

The jail is built in pods so inmates can be separated easily, allowing minimum and maximum security prisoners as well as female inmates to have independent sections.

“It’s just a totally better layout,” Venable said.

The jail is part of a new $47 million judicial center, which includes a new sheriff’s office and courthouse.

The courthouse remains under construction and likely won’t open until the end of the year or early next year, said Mike Apple, the county’s finance director.

Many of the sheriff’s office employees have already moved to the new building, which is about a mile from the old site.

The new jail is at 170 N.C. 65 in Wentworth, near the governmental complex and Rockingham Community College.

The county issued bonds to pay for the judicial center and about $4.3 million for an emergency operations center on the 38-acre site along with a communications tower and system, Apple said.

A 5-cent property tax for capital projects is being used to pay down that bond debt.

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com