- The South Carolina Legislature is considering $20 million in state funding to renovate rural courthouses, with Bamberg County being a top priority.
BAMBERG — On a wet March morning, some 30 people awaiting their day in court filed, along with their families, into a former National Guard armory-turned-civic hall on Bamberg’s main highway.
They passed one by one through a metal detector and took a seat in a plastic folding chair on their assigned side of a black curtain — the accused on one side, victims on the other — a piece of fabric the only thing between them.
Those brought from the county jail wearing bright orange jumpsuits sat shackled inside a tunnel-like room that, on other days of the month, city police use as a practice firing range. Paper targets still hung on the walls. Jail officers stood over the group keeping watch…