Cass County prisoners were able to vandalize the new jail due to faulty building materials, not faulty design, a project architect said Tuesday.
Since the jail's opening in September, Cass County inmates have broken off steel shelves, smashed windows and removed fire sprinkler heads, causing more than $10,000 in damages.
The windows are made with chemically strengthened glass, a product that should have been more resistant, said Rick Hoganson, a project architect with Foss Associates, the Fargo-Moorhead company that implemented the jail's design.
In the design, the jail could have been built using special plastic, heat-strengthened glass or chemically strengthened glass.
Architects chose to use chemically treated glass due to its being three-to-four times stronger than the heat-strengthened glass, Hoganson said at Tuesday's Cass County commission meeting.
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The glass has been tested with a double-bladed axe and shown to be a superior product for jail facilities, County Commissioner Scott Wagner said.
However, the manufacturing of chemically treated glass is more difficult to control, Hoganson said.
"There is no way to guarantee the process without testing each individual piece of glass," he said.
The solution is not replacing the glass with perforated metal or metal bars, he said. While the glass was damaged by inmates, it did its job by containing the prisoners, Wagner said.
"In the jail itself, we have removed everything potentially damaging," Cass County Sheriff Don Rudnick said.
The facility was built in a secure manner fit for the county, Hoganson said.
"It's not like a federal prison designed to deal with more difficult prisoners," he said.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Lisa Schneider at (701) 241-5529
