Old Cloud County Jail is coming down

Mar 27, 2024

Demolition work is almost completed on the old Cloud County Jail at Ninth and Broadway.

The 32-bed facility, which had been in operation for over 80 years, was closed in 2014 when the new jail opened on Fort Kearney Road north of Concordia.

A report on a county commission meeting held October 24, 1929, shows that commissioners approved a bid of $14,945 from P.H. Sanneman of Clay Center to be the general contractors to build the jail.

The commissioners also approved a bid of $2,576 from Chas. A. Nordquist of Concordia to do the plumbing and heating for the jail, with the sewer lines at 34-cents per foot, water at 26-cents per foot, and gas at 21-cents per foot.

Commissioners at the 1929 meeting also approved the bid of $678 from C. H. Culbertson Electric Company of Concordia to do the electrical wiring, with lead cable at 55 cents per foot.

On the recommendation of the architects that designed the jail – Washburn & Stuckey – commissioners accepted the bid of $14,987 from the Pauly Jail Building Company of St. Louis to provide all the jail equipment, including niched and non-overflow toilets.

Randy Sorell worked at the jail for 15 years. He started as a corrections officer in 1992, was promoted to sergeant within a few years, and then was named the jail administrator in 1999.

“The structure of the jail got worse each year,” Sorell said. “It seemed like there was always something wrong. We had lots of plumbing problems and the walls were deteriorating.”

Sorell described the jail as such: the basement held the evidence room, a meeting room, the boiler room, and a laundry room – corrections officers did the inmates laundry. On the main floor was the office, the booking room, and the kitchen. In the east block was a four-person cell mostly used for female inmates, and a one-person holding cell used for disruptive inmates. In the west block was a 10-person cell. Upstairs there was a north and a south cell block that held eight inmates each.

Corrections officers cooked all the inmates' meals. “Often times there was just one corrections officer on duty,” Sorell said. “So you might be cooking the meals at five or six o'clock and then someone would be brought in for booking and you had to process that, so you stopped cooking.”

Sorell recalled one time when he was called in at five in the morning to deal with a situation. “The inmates had flushed their towels down the toilets. The whole cell block was flooded.”

There were two escapes in Sorell's years at the jail. “The first one was in 1995. I got a call at 1 a.m. that there was a Code 99 at the jail. Three Sedgwick County inmates had jumped the corrections officer, held a shank they'd made to his throat and dragged him out into the parking lot where they stole a car. All three of them were caught within 36 hours.”

A second escape in 1999 involved inmates from the local area. “One was from Clyde, and one was from Concordia. They jumped the two corrections officers on duty, beat them and escaped.”

Sorell said you always had to be on guard and always on the lookout for trouble when working at the jail. “These inmates had a lot of time on their hands, and you never knew what they're thinking. Most of them just wanted to do their time and get out of there. But some of them... you just never knew what was going on in their heads. The jail equipment was old; the cells were old. We still pulled on metal bars to open doors.”

Sorell remembered one inmate who had to be removed from his cell because he was eating the paint that was peeling off the walls. “He was trying to get high by eating paint. Another guy was eating the toilet paper out of the toilet. Over 15 years I saw just about everything.”

When it comes to the people he worked with at the old jail, Sorell has a lot of good memories. “I had a lot of very good full-time and part-time corrections officers who worked with me over the years. I worked with a guy who ended up joining the KBI. Another guy became a sheriff, and another one joined the Highway Patrol. Jamie Biery went on to take my place as jail administrator. We would get a lot of guys who were 20 or 21 years old and in college studying Criminal Justice. Being a corrections officer was their first step into a law enforcement career.”

But the building itself was a headache. Over and over again. “We kept putting bandaids on a building that needed major surgery, and you can only do that for so long,” Sorell said.

Smith Construction Services of Scottsville is doing the demolition on the old jail, and they hope to have the job completed by fall. According to the Cloud County Clerk's office, at this time there are no plans in place for the location and the space will remain vacant.