New Jail Plan May Be Scrapped As State Needs Shrink
Hinds County’s plan to build a $14 million, 400-bed regional jail for state and county inmates has fallen victim to Mississippi state budget cuts, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections no longer has the money – or the inmates – to justify using 300 beds at the jail, which also would have provided 100 beds for county prisoners. It’s expected that Hinds County supervisors will halt the project Monday and cancel a recently approved contract with Jackson-based architects M3A for the facility design.
The cancellation of the project puts Hinds back in the position of needing more jail space. The 726-bed detention center is often at capacity … “I think it’s a mistake (not to build the regional jail) because I think that we need to house the additional inmates,” District 2 Supervisor Doug Anderson said. “It’s bad when you tell criminals that there’s no room at the inn for them to be incarcerated.”
Hinds stood to get $3.2 million a year from the state for housing state inmates. About $1.7 million of that was expected to go back into running the jail. The facility also would have created around 50 jobs. But the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department had concerns the money from the state wouldn’t cover the costs of operating the jail, said Chief Deputy Steve Pickett. Those concerns led supervisors’ President George Smith to ask state Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps recently whether the state needs jail beds in Hinds County. It turned out the answer was “no.”
The state had to remove 154 inmates from 11 regional jails as part of a $16.4 million budget cut this fiscal year. MDOC also upped the number of inmates on house arrest and is considering some 5,000 for parole to cut costs. The state has about 600 fewer inmates now than it did last year, leaving Epps unable to commit to housing state prisoners in Hinds’ regional jail … In addition, some 1,200 beds already are coming available to the state with construction of regional jails in Washington, Chickasaw, Yazoo and Alcorn counties. Those jails will open in about a year. The four counties have contracts with the state guaranteeing the placement of state inmates. Epps brought a contract to Hinds about two years ago, but it went unsigned as officials debated how big to build the jail.
The county might use the $14 million in bond money it had set aside for the regional jail to expand the existing detention center, Anderson said. Supervisors have not decided how they will spend the money, which is earmarked for construction and road paving. Hinds Sheriff Malcolm McMillin said he will support a jail expansion. “We can always use additional space,” he said. “It may be cheaper to add 100 beds to the existing facility than it would be to build another.”
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