This week, the POP Project took an afternoon road trip north, into Madison County, NC.
Several months ago, Madison County opened its new detention center. Paired with a new sheriff’s office and EMS center, the new detention center is tucked just off the main drag through the area.
POP had previously delivered books to the jail in downtown Marshall. It was a small building, overlooking the river. The lobby was alive with people moving and packing, and people were busy shouting at each other from one room to the next. The sheriff’s vintage Ford Galaxie 500, the same car featured on the “Andy Griffith Show,” sat on the street out front.
The new center was a far cry from their spot downtown. Larger, sleeker, the new building sits more imposingly at the top of a hill. The lobby is a no-frills, bare-bone blue, and chaos is kept at a minimum. We saw no one but the receptionist, and left the books in a corner of the lobby, as we were instructed, before heading back out.
The new Madison County Detention Center was somehow more like the other jails and prisons we have visited, and somehow also a new entity in itself. However, one icon of the old jail remained.
Sheriff Harwood’s Galaxie 500 still sits outside.
