NATCHEZ, Miss. – Adams County supervisors have decided to gear up plans for building a new jail that could be on about 35 acres of land being donated by a company that supervisors declined to publicly name.
Monday’s action is just the first of many steps needed in determining how the jail is to be funded and what form the facility will take, but Sheriff Travis Patten applauded the county board’s initiative. “It’s not a backburner issue,” he said of the pressing need to replace the county’s deteriorating jail that’s nearly 50 years old.
Adams County supervisors for more than a decade have been struggling to maintain the old jail that they’ve said can’t be replaced because of the high costs.
Jail conditions have worsened so much that Adams County this past year has been sending most inmates to the nearby Concordia Parish detention facility, which is paid by the county to detain them.
The Board of Supervisors on Monday voted to accept the donated land to potentially build the new jail. Board members declined to name the donor or specify the site’s location. Supervisors will get a Jackson-based construction company to update jail-design plans and the building costs it prepared for the county in 2014.
The state Legislature will be asked to allow Adams County to arrange special long-term financing for the construction, said board attorney Scott Slover.
The 2014 plan prepared by Benchmark Construction Corp. of Jackson called for a new 185-inmate detention center costing about $7 million to build. However, any new Adams County jail is expected to have a smaller capacity.
The 49-year-old building is so outdated and poorly designed that “the only feasible path forward for Adams County is with a new jail facility,” stated jail consultant Kathryn Bryan in a 2022 report she did for Adams County.
It’ll be four or more years before a new jail could be built for Adams County, said county board President Kevin Wilson.
Natchez has also contracted with the Concordia Parish detention center to house people arrested by the Natchez Police Department. The city closed its jail a few years ago and was paying to detain those arrested by the NPD at the county jail.
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