Supervisors approve $68K for needs assessment of jail facility

NATCHEZ — When it comes to the Adams County Jail facility, it’s more than a question of whether to build new or not, officials shared during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Monday.

Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten said he received eye-opening insight at a free, three-day training last week with the National Institute of Corrections that led him to request the supervisors to fund a $68,760 needs assessment on the Adams County jail.

The training on July 9 through 11 was also attended by some of the supervisors, judges and several from the Adams County community and officials of Pike County.

It was so informative, Patten said, that Pike County officials halted construction that had already been approved a few months earlier for its planned 207-bed facility because of information received at the training.

“They got up, walked out of the meeting, went to stop the process and then came back to the meeting to learn more. It was an extremely eye-opening thing for me as well,” Patten said. “We learned a lot. But (one of the things) we learned that needs to happen is we really need to get a needs assessment done.”

The supervisors voted 4-1 in favor of funding a needs assessment exploring the jail facility on Monday.  Supervisor Wes Middleton voted against it without speaking at all on the topic. Supervisors Warren Gaines, Angela Hutchins, Ricky Gray and Kevin Wilson all were in favor.

The needs assessment does not mean the supervisors commit to building a new jail facility, but does start the process of discovering what kind of facility, what size facility and what staff are needed to fulfill the community’s needs, officials said. The assessment looks at the court system, the existing facilities and operations going back ten years.

“Pike County had just built another jail facility in 1997. But it was done wrong. So now here they are again in 2024 ready to build a new law enforcement complex because the one they did was wrong. I don’t want that to happen to us, whether you are for (building) a jail or not. But I do want factual, unbiased data,” Patten said. “This data will tell us exactly where we need to be.”

Board of Supervisors President Kevin Wilson asked about the cost of building a facility, “How are we going to pay for it and what is the cost? Some idea?”

But an assessment needs to be done before that question can be answered, said Debbie Germany, who has been leading an exploratory committee sanctioned by the supervisors.

“We can’t go further until we know where we’re going,” she said.

Meanwhile, Patten asked the supervisors to act now on the needs assessment rather than later and suggested using American Recovery Act funds to pay for it.

“The cost doesn’t go the other way, meaning that it will never be cheaper,” he said. “It is something that you are going to have to do eventually anyway. But it’s better to do it sooner than later because your costs will continue to rise.”

Second to the needs assessment, Patten said American Recovery Act funds could also be used for a soil study on the proposed construction site for a new jail complex to determine whether it is suitable to build on or not.

In early March, Germany told the supervisors that a private company planned to donate more than 30 acres on U.S. 61 north of Natchez to be used to house a new county jail or criminal justice complex.

No action on such a study was made during Monday’s meeting.

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