Should Columbia County officials prolong the construction of additions to the county's detention center, police say some prisoners might find themselves bunking on the jail floor.

"I wouldn't say we're overcrowded," said Columbia County sheriff's Capt. Brett Carani. "We're almost at capacity."

On Monday, the inmate population at the detention center on Columbia Road in Appling was 244. Its capacity is 266.

County voters will decide in November whether to extend that capacity. The construction of two 10,000-square-foot dorm additions to the jail is part of a 2011-16 1-cent sales tax referendum.

The dorms and a new administration building at the detention center will cost $10.05 million, according to county documents. The first dorm is included as part of a sales tax bond package, meaning the $4 million needed for its construction might come sooner and then be repaid with sales tax money.

Should voters approve the referendum, Capt. Carani said, the dorm addition could be built in two to three years.

The dorm construction might also avoid legal entanglements for the sheriff's office, Lt. Harvey Woods said.

"If you start putting inmates on the floor, you tend to have more lawsuits," he said. "Even though they may be frivolous lawsuits, you still have to pay county attorneys to go out there to defend it."

The detention center in Aiken county is already experiencing the kind of overcrowding Columbia County officials hope to avoid.

Aiken County sheriff's Lt. Michael Frank said its detention center is designed to house 317 prisoners. However, 413 inmates were in the facility Wednesday, he said. It has held as many as 492 inmates, Lt. Frank said.

To relieve some of the overcrowding at the detention center, Lt. Frank said, officials are adding 40 three-layer bunk beds.

The Webster Detention Center on Phinizy Road has a capacity of 910, and the jail on Walton Way has a capacity of 358. The county also maintains 50 beds at a state-run detention center on Tobacco Road. On Monday, the inmate population in Augusta was 1,183. Though the Richmond County jails are not overcrowded, they're close.

Augusta authorities also hope to expand their jail, but Maj. William Johnson said those hopes were dashed, for now, when construction bids for the expansion project recently were thrown out by county commissioners. The low bids of $26.76 million and $28.68 million, made by McKnight Construction and R.W. Allen & Associates, respectively, were rejected by the county procurement department for a technicality and an incomplete bid form.

Capt. Carani compared the proposed dorms in Columbia County to military barracks: multiple bunk beds in a large room.

"The amount of cells we've got now is the amount of cells that we need for the near future," Lt. Woods said. "What we need is beds for minimum custody inmates, and that's what the dorms provide at a cheaper price to the taxpayer than building a cell area."

Each dorm will hold 96 beds, Lt. Woods said. The detention center opened in 2002, and he said it is impressive that the sheriff's office is only just now at the point of needing to add to the facility.

"Most jails open up, and they're already out of room when they open," he said.

Lt. Woods called the additions a proactive measure and said that once both dorms are complete, they should meet the county's needs for many years.

"If we can build two of them, then that will take us pretty far into the future," he said. "If we build one, it's going to give us about three or four years."

Staff Writer Sylvia Cooper contributed to this article.