Bruce,
I am not sure if you are aware or not of the seriousness of allowing the prisoners to run amuck. Kay County jail has had a history for a few years of being unsafe. I take it you have never worked in that faciltiy. because anyone that has could tell you how unsafe it is to work there. I have family that worked in that facility. He left after a few weeks as he regognized the potential for unsafe situations. He had worked in secure facilities and was blown away by the lack of saftey for the staff. Some issues were facility related, some lack of training and staffing for the facility. As he told me, it was a time bomb. Just waiting to go off. As I read in the paper one comment was that the prisoners run the facility, and that is the same comment my family member made. I also know of a transport that came from that facility that was tranporting to another facility. He transported contiban from that facility into another facility. While talking to him, he said it was the norm to barter with tobacco and other contiban in the Newkirk facility as managment didn't shake down the cells when these things were known to be in there.
As far as rioting. this is going to happen when prisoners are allowed to run amuck and then when you try to contian them they are going to revolt. Not rocket science.
It is too bad that the county has been a victim of shoddy workmanship on this nice building. And it is going to be costly to either fix or build a new one. But it won't be a drop in a bucket to a law suit that a family member to one of the staff or another prisoner is going to bring if someone is killed in that jail because these issues weren't resolved in a timely fashion.
We in Cowley didn't want a new jail as well but after time you have to bite the bullet and do what you have to do. The old jail was working but over crowded. And although the staff saftey issues weren't as bad as what you have in Kay. There were issues the Sheriff recognized and pushed for a new jail. No one wants higher taxes especially me. But the money and lives that can be wasted by ignoring this is going to be more costly in the long run.