NATCHEZ, Miss. – The Adams County board has received a proposal for a privately owned jail being built to replace the county’s deteriorating facility.
Adams County would rent the jail to house inmates and not be responsible for the new building’s maintenance.
“You would never have that headache of that maintenance cost at all. It’s our problem and not your problem,” said Bert Carson, an executive at Sustainability Partners, who met Monday with the Adams County Board of Supervisors.
The board has been struggling for years on how to finance the construction of a jail to replace Adams County’s substandard detention center that’s been plagued for years by various structural problems.
While county supervisors expressed interest Monday in Carson’s proposition, no commitment was made as the board continues to review its various options for a new jail.
Sustainability Partners is an Arizona-based company that provides “infrastructure as a service” throughout the country to various local governments, such as Jackson, Gulfport, East Baton Rouge Parish, La., and Galveston County, Texas.
Carson said his company would pay for building Adams County’s new jail and charge the county a monthly usage fee based on the number of inmates or size of the facility.
While he didn’t detail specific costs for Adams County, he cited plans for a Louisiana jail being built by his company and saving the parish about $3 million a year from what it was spending to operate its public jail.
Adams County’s jail conditions have worsened so much this past year that inmates are being sent to the nearby Concordia Parish detention facility, which is paid by the county to detain them.
Adams County supervisors last month voted to accept land being donated for potentially building a new jail. The board also agreed to determine how the jail is to be funded and what form the facility will take. A Jackson-based construction company is to update jail design plans and 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.
The county’s 49-year-old jail – located on the corner of State and Wall streets by the Adams County Courthouse – has been the subject of lawsuits and court orders for improvements to be made. The jail’s various structural problems in past years have included a leaky roof, broken water pipes, mold, poor ventilation, an inoperable AC unit, electrical problems, crumbling exterior bricks and malfunctioning cell locks.
Natchez has also contracted 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 Adams County to detain those arrested by the NPD.
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