NATCHEZ, Miss. – Adams County supervisors are looking at purchasing prison pods and sending inmates elsewhere as concerns heighten about the Adams County jail’s conditions.
“We’ve got to find a temporary fix,” said Adams County board President Wes Middleton.
If inmates are “in a jail not fit to be in,” the board should close it and contract with another facility to house them, said county Supervisor Ricky Gray.
Built in 1975, the Adams County jail is considered substandard with various structural problems that county supervisors have been struggling to fund and fix for several years.
In discussions today, the Board of Supervisors weighed the prospects of sending inmates to a nearby Louisiana detention center in Concordia Parish. Supervisors are also considering acquiring cell pods used at the CoreCivic prison in Adams County and place them outside the county jail located on State and Wall streets by the courthouse.
The jail currently has about 108 detainees, which is about 20 above what it should have, said Sheriff Travis Patten.Most of them are pre-trial detainees, said board attorney Scott Slover
The jail has inmates arrested and detained by Adams County and Natchez law-enforcement agencies. Natchez has contracted with Adams County to hold city arrestees.
Middleton said paying to have the Concordia Parish prison take the inmates appears to be the best short-term option. “Feasibly, it’s the only way that makes sense.” However, there are legal and financial factors to work out.
While the board continues to consider what to do about housing jail inmates in the short term, any decision for the long term entails whether to build a new Adams County detention center. Supervisors have avoided that because of the multimillion-dollar costs and uncertainties about how to pay for it.
The jail has been the subject of lawsuits and court orders for improvements to be made. Its problems the past decade have included an operable air conditioner, leaky roof, mold, crumbling exterior bricks and electrical defects. Inmates are also tearing up jail fixtures.
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The Adams County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to ban guns from county parks. They expressed concerns about violence that could occur at park gatherings attended by people carrying firearms, which state law does allow in parks unless specially barred by local governments. County Supervisor Kevin Wilson – the board’s only elected Republican — was the dissenting vote against the gun ban.
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Adams County Supervisor Warren Gaines said he’s been subjected to “harassment” via text messages. While he noted he can tolerate constituents’ complaints about road conditions or other issues, he said he’s received personal threats that county board attorney Scott Slover said could be a crime.
Please fix the roads in Natchez Ms ……. Before you build a jail !