Construction is expected to start on the first phase of a Hinds County jail by late summer or early fall.
The new facility will be built on sixteenth section land in Jackson that is located at McDowell Road and Gallatin Street, with the entrance to be off of Gallatin Street, said Hinds County Supervisor Credell Calhoun of District 3, who serves as the board president.
The land, near the Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center, will be leased from Jackson Public Schools.
Plans are to build the new jail in two phases, with the first phase consisting of housing for about 200 detainees plus necessary amenities, Calhoun said.
The new facility would have its own water system and water tower so it will not have to depend on the city of Jackson’s aging water system, said Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones. The facility is expected to be state-of-the-art and more secure than the current jail, he said.
Construction on the first phase of the jail, estimated to cost $60 million, is expected to take 18 months to 24 months, Calhoun said.
The second phase of construction will consist of adding housing for another 500 detainees and would start after the first phase is completed, Calhoun said. The current facility would need to be maintained while the new jail is built but would be eventually phased out of use, he said.
Both phases of construction would cost a total of $130 million to $150 million, he said.
CDFL Architect + Engineers is the architect for the jail and Benchmark Construction in Jackson will build it.
Benchmark specializes in building jails, said Calhoun, who has visited the Coahoma County Justice Center in Clarksdale that Benchmark handled.
Funding is in place for the first phase of construction, Calhoun said. “We’re getting a loan, so to speak, to build the jail and will pay the loan back,” he said.
A small property tax increase is always a possibility if needed, he said.
Congressmen Michael Guest and Bennie Thompson have offered help in securing funding for the project, Calhoun said.
The new jail will replace the Raymond Detention Center, which was poorly constructed in the 1990s and almost immediately presented mechanical problems with doors that would not lock.
Calhoun said he, the Hinds County jail administrator and county attorney met with Jones just a day after Jones was elected as sheriff to discuss a new jail.
“What we were trying to do was to get him up to speed about what the Justice Department expects,” Calhoun said.
A consent decree from the Department of Justice has been in place since 2016 for the three detention facilities in Hinds County, including the Raymond Detention Center, due to unconstitutional conditions. The decree was modified in 2020.
Earlier this year, the county sought release from the decree, saying it has been in place for over two years, is not narrowly drawn and goes beyond what is needed to remedy constitutional violations.
Calhoun hopes the Justice Department will consider the work that has been done to improve the current jail and plan for the new one.
“We got the doors fixed and kept moving on, trying to get a new facility because the current one cannot be brought to the standards the Justice Department expects,” he said.
When the board of supervisors took office, the Detention Center in Raymond had doors that would not lock and detainees could move at will, Calhoun said. “Now we have two priorities: That it will be safe for detainees and safe for detention officers.”
The construction of a new jail would be a step in the right direction, Jones said, but would not be enough to completely remove Hinds County from the consent decree.
A new jail that is more secure than the current one could make it easier to hire detention officers, Calhoun said.
The Board of Supervisors voted to increase the annual salary of a detention officer from about $26,000 to $31,000 and that should help recruit officers, Jones said.
“I’ve developed a career path for recruitment and retention,” he said.
Supervisor Robert Graham of District 1 said a jail must be fully staffed so that prisoners are guarded and don’t have the opportunity to vandalize it. “If we build a new jail but don’t have enough employees working at the jail, the prisoners will tear it up,” he said.
The new jail’s location in Jackson rather than Raymond would mean shorter transports for detainees who need to attend court in downtown Jackson, Jones said. That would result in a gasoline savings and reduce the danger involved in transporting detainees, Jones said.
Building a new jail isn’t the only prerequisite for Hinds County to get out from under the Justice Department’s consent decree, Graham said. “It’s not as simple as brick and mortar,” he said.
