Under Cover of Darkness, Inmates Move to New Jail

Inmates at the dark and dreary Loudoun County jail got a surprise wake-up call Saturday morning. It was 3 a.m., and they were told they would be moving to the county's new jail -- a $27 million state-of-the-art facility with skylights, basketball courts and enhanced security.

"We went ahead and fed them breakfast and had them get their stuff together," said the jail's supervisor, Maj. Robert L. Mulligan of the Sheriff's Office. "The first inmates left at 4:10 a.m. The inmates told us they were very glad to get out of the old jail, a place they called the dungeon."

The 52-year-old jail at Edwards Ferry Road and Market Street in Leesburg will be torn down to make room for a parking garage and possibly courthouse facilities, Mulligan said. The new jail was built south of town, near Leesburg Executive Airport.

"It's sad to see the jail moved from the same corner it has been located for over two centuries," Loudoun Sheriff Stephen O. Simpson said in a statement after the last inmate had been moved. "There was just no space left in downtown Leesburg, and the new jail was long overdue."

Simpson announced last month that the jail would open in June. But the exact date and time were kept secret -- even to most jail staffers -- until late last week.

"For security reasons, I shut down communications [for inmates] in the building about 24 hours prior to the move," Mulligan said. "We turned off the telephones. We didn't have visitations. We shut down any lines of communication so word couldn't get out."

Mulligan said he was concerned that an inmate might overhear staffers inadvertently talking about the move and then phone people on the outside to plan an escape.

That's why the jail's 95 inmates were jolted from sleep at 3 a.m., Mulligan said, about three hours before their usual wake-up time.

"I had a policy in place where our maximum-security inmates were the first ones to leave," Mulligan said. "High-risk inmates first. That way, if people started to notice we were moving the jail, most of the high-risk inmates already had been moved."

The inmates were loaded into vans -- about 10 at a time -- for the 10-minute ride to the new Loudoun County Adult Detention Center.

"The first inmates we transported were really excited about being the first ones to arrive," said Sheriff's Office spokesman Kraig Troxell, who documented the move with a camera. "Some actually asked if they'd get anything special for being the first ones in there."

Privately, jail officials joked that the first arrival would be awarded a key chain.

"A key chain," Mulligan said with a chuckle, "but with no key attached."

The whole operation took 7 1/2 hours. "The move went without incident," Simpson said. "The staff put together an operations plan that was seamless, and the move was completed ahead of schedule."

The new jail can accommodate 220 inmates, about twice as many as the old one. Loudoun has about 400 inmates on any given night, however, so many will continue to be housed outside the county.

Loudoun has announced plans to build a 240-bed addition to the jail, possibly as early as 2011. But even then, Simpson said, the jail will be too small to house an inmate population that is expected to grow.