NATCHEZ, Miss. – City aldermen have agreed to contract the Concordia Parish prison to house people arrested by Natchez police. This was necessitated by the Adams County jail being largely uninhabitable and emptied of inmates because of structural and security problems.
“Right now, we are in an emergency situation. We’ve got to take care of these prisoners,” city attorney Bryan Callaway told aldermen Tuesday as they approved the measures for relocating the detainees.
The Adams County Sheriff’s Office has been sending some inmates to the Concordia Parish jail since early this year, but a large evacuation took place last week after inmates broke a water line that flooded Adams County’s downtown Natchez jail. The 48-year-old building had already been deemed substandard and riddled with various defects for years.
Natchez closed its city jail a few years ago and has been paying Adams County to house those arrested by the Natchez Police Department at $30 a day per inmate. Aldermen on Tuesday approved a similar contract with the Concordia Parish Correctional Facility.
Last week’s jail calamity prompted the move of about 35 Adams County inmates and 16 Natchez detainees to the nearby Louisiana jail, said Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten. Remaining in the county jail on Monday were about 30 inmates, such as those classified as trusties or who have mental-health problems, he said.
Most of the city inmates were arrested by the Natchez Police Department for misdemeanors and sentenced by the municipal judge to serve jail time, said NPD chief Cal Green.
The Concordia Parish prison – located on state Highway 15 near Ridgecrest and Ferriday about 15 miles from Natchez – incarcerates inmates from Vidalia, Ferriday and now Natchez.
The measures approved by Natchez aldermen Tuesday are to ask the circuit court to authorize the transfer of Natchez inmates and to contract Concordia Parish to take them.
The county jail’s July 30 flooding incident that Patten called a “security breach” has worsened conditions in a jail he says “has deteriorated to its worst state” as “the sheriff’s office is left dealing with a situation that gets worse by the day.” The county jail’s deficiencies, he said, include being ill-equipped to house inmates with psychological problems.
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