DURHAM — The heavy metal door slid shut, with an electric-motor hum and a clinking of gear chains, settling into place with a solid thump of finality.
“Not a pleasant sound,” said Matt Yarbrough.
Not at all pleasant, because the thumping door was to the inmates’ side of the Durham County Jail.
Yarbrough, a Durham businessman, was one of about 20 members of the Durham Crime Cabinet who got a tour inside the monolithic white tower on Mangum Street last week.
Past the magistrates’ office and into the area where those arrested are processed, through laundry and kitchen and medical clinic, past classrooms and library, finally to a two-level “pod” where cells surrounded a cavernous day room.
Down cinder-block hallways painted gray and white, over bare concrete floors, into elevators where video cameras read hand signals for what floor to stop on. Functional, utilitarian and, frankly, grim – but, to appearances, a clean, well-lighted, efficient place.
“I’m impressed with what I saw here,” said another tourgoer, Victoria Peterson. “It was an eye-opening from what I’d been hearing about the jail, which has not been very, very positive at all.”
