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Tour of Bureau County Jail ‘a real eye-opener’

Joel Nelson (left) of Princeton listens as Sgt. Dexter Hansen, superintendent of the Bureau County Jail in Princeton, talks about the building's deficiencies. Nelson was one of five people to take a public tour of the building Wednesday. Additional tours are planned on 13 separate days between Sunday and March 17. (Jim Dunn)

Joel Nelson (left) of Princeton listens as Sgt. Dexter Hansen, superintendent of the Bureau County Jail in Princeton, talks about the building's deficiencies. Nelson was one of five people to take a public tour of the building Wednesday. Additional tours are planned on 13 separate days between Sunday and March 17. (Jim Dunn)

Matt Keutzer (left) stands with Sgt. Dexter Hansen in the assembly room of the Bureau County Jail during a tour Wednesday. Acoustics in the room are so bad that excessive noise made by inmates eating there got to be too much. "The noise level was unbearable," Hansen said, as were fights by inmates when they were let out of their cells for meals. Jail staffers now feed inmates in their cells three times a day. (Jim Dunn)

Chronic leaks in sewer pipes in the Bureau County Jail's basement cause damage to ceiling tiles and anything else below them, as pointed out by Sgt. Dexter Hansen during a tour of the jail Wednesday. Inmates cause some of the problem by intentionally stopping up toilets and flushing them. (Jim Dunn)

Sgt. Dexter Hansen points to gaps in upper walls in a sergeant's office that used to be the chaplain's office in the basement of the 44-year-old Bureau County Jail. The jail's lower level is packed with records, evidence, and other items. As Bureau County Sheriff Jim Reed put it, “We outgrew this a long time ago.” (Jim Dunn)