County Approves Jail Study

WATER VALLEY – Yalobusha supervisors approved a jail feasibility study that will not cost taxpayers at the “first Monday” supervisor meeting in Water Valley.

    Oxford-based Capital Strategies, LLC company representative Bill Harrell received approval to conduct the study to explore the county’s options to expand the current facility or build a new jail on county-owned property south of Water Valley.

    “We are volunteering to do the county a feasibility study, options you can do, at no cost to the county,” Harrell told supervisors.

    Before approving Harrell’s request, supervisors made sure the study would not come with strings attached. 
 
    “Bill, one thing I didn’t fully understand, where do y’all recoup your money for the expense of doing this feasibility study?” Vaughn asked.

    “I get paid by various construction companies that are interested in doing something… They get their money back if they get the contract. They have found that it is beneficial to have this information in the supervisors’ hands so that they can make an informed decision.

    They are not charging you, this is just a competitive tool they want to use,” Harrell explained. “I am not going to recommend anybody. You are not obligated to anybody,” he also said, telling supervisors they can use the study any way they want, including throwing it in the trash.

    Currently supervisors have identified two options – renovate the current jail adjacent to the courthouse or build a jail near the new Sheriff’s office.

    “Down at the Carothers building, we know we got some hurdles to jump,” Vaughn said, referring to having sewage and gas service, plus a portion of the property is classified in the flood zone.

    “Over here,” Vaughn said, referring to the existing jail, “do we have enough land to compensate for doing a structure big enough to serve the county for 20 years. Things like that we are guessing at. We don’t need to be guessing. We need to know what options we have. It’s certainly something we are going to have to address in the near future,” Vaughn added. “Without somebody with some expertise doing that, we are just guessing and I don’t like guessing.”

    District Five Supervisor Frank “Bubba” Tillman chimed in, telling Harrell he was interested in looking at the feasibility of using the county-owned property, known as the Carothers building, for the jail.

    “When we started the project a while back, we moved Lance’s offices and everything at the new building out at the Carothers Building,” Tillman said. “My opinion would be to start with down there and then look up here (current jail site),” Tillman said, reiterated that he wanted detailed information on both sites.

Jail History

    The feasibility study is the latest chapter in multi-year saga involving the county’s 1964 model jail. In April, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) notified the county that the Yalobusha County Jail will no longer be eligible to house state inmates classified to work.

    The ruling came after a series of inspections  by prisoner rights attorney Ron Welch, dating back to September, 2008., when Welch compared the jail to a dungeon. Welch obtained a federal court order imposing a strict deadline, September 1, 2009, in which the county must show “good cause” that a new jail was in the works or the county will lose the right to house state prisoners.

    During that 2008 visit, Welch also limited the number of state classified working inmates to two.
      Although Welch’s jurisdiction and the court order pertains solely to state inmates classified to work, the issue also touched off a broader discussion about the 1964-model facility that houses a total of 24 prisoners in the months and years following Welch’s visits.

    In September, 2009, the county was granted a 12 month extension for Welch’s court order after supervisors and Sheriff Lance Humphreys had worked on a number of options, including building a regional jail to replace the 1964-model jail currently in use.

    Talk of a regional jail initially surfaced when MDOC Commissioner Chris Epps visited the county in 2007 to discuss the possibility of building a  jail that would jointly house county and state inmates. The county could receive $20 per day per inmate from the state to house the inmates, income that would be budgeted for the debt service reduction for the new facility. Additionally the inmates could provide labor on city, school and county property.

    Authorization and funding for a regional jail in Yalobusha became a hot political topic, both in the 2008 and 2009 state legislative session. Each year a number of bills in the Senate and House authorizing regional jails did not survive the lengthy legislative process.

       With the nation mired in a recession and state funding tight, supervisors abandoned the idea to build a regional jail in 2009. Instead, attention focused on building a $2.5 million county jail to house 56 county and pre-trial inmates and 20 to 25 state inmates.

    In September, 2009, supervisors voted 4 -1 to to move forward with the construction of a  new county jail. Facing a tight budget year in 2010, coupled with a county tax increase, the project lost steam. Although Vaughn noted at that time that county officials “haven’t backed up on our commitment to build this jail.” Vaughn also  explained that state cuts that affect the county must also be considered.

    In September, 2010, MDOC granted a final six-month extension for the county to house work-classified state inmates. In April, MDOC picked up the county’s sole working inmate who performed grounds maintenance and janitorial work at many of the county-owned buildings.

    While the loss of a single working state inmate did not have a big impact, a bigger issue has been having enough space to house the inmates. Humphreys struggled during the 2010-2011 fiscal year to keep his jail budget in line.

    At the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, 2010, his department was $8,035 over budget for housing prisoners out-of-county, $2,464 over budget for feeding prisoners, $3,748 over budget for prisoner’s medication, and $1,150 for Xray and lab fees for prisoners.

    During a budget meeting held last month, Humphreys told supervisors that he had over 30 inmates in the county jail and he had even borrowed cots from the county-owned hospital to accommodate the prisoners.