The Leflore County Sheriff’s Department has received unofficial approval from the Mississippi Department of Corrections to enter a Joint State-County Work Program to house state inmates at the county jail and have them help with picking up trash and other public works jobs.
Ed Hargett, who was provided consulting services to the county on correctional management for the past decade, said MDOC intends to move men currently incarcerated at the Technical Violation Center and utilize the space for women instead. In the Joint State-County Work Program, male inmates who previously would have been held at the Technical Violation Center would be housed in the county jail.
Hargett and Leflore County Undersheriff Ken Spencer agreed that inmate labor saves the county money. Hargett said a low estimate of the savings would be $1 million per year, and a study conducted several years ago estimating a higher figure of $3 million.
Sheriff Ricky Banks met Tuesday with Hargett, Spencer, Warden Tyrone Banks and Jody Bradley, who is the executive administrator for the Greenwood Police Department, to discuss the work program.
Last week, the sheriff made a request to state Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain to implement the program. In an email to Cain, Sheriff Banks asked that the county be approved for 50 beds and that the state-county program function as an additional way to help inmates prepare for reentering society when they have completed their sentences.
“We are able to provide reentry programs such as A&D (alcohol and drug rehabilitation), pre-release life skills and authentic manhood skills training,” Banks said in the letter.
He went on to request a $31-per-inmate-per-day payment from the state if the reentry program was approved, but MDOC turned the offer down. The Department of Corrections “didn’t feel like they needed that as a reentry program at this time,” Hargett said.
At one time, the state would pay county jails about $20 a day per inmate, but that stopped when Marshall Fisher was appointed state corrections commissioner in 2015, Hargett said.
However, the state is moving forward to implement the Joint State-County Work Program.
“The incarceration rate for females in the state is now higher than males, and MDOC needs more beds to house them,” Hargett explained.
Changing the gender of the correctional facility’s population could potentially take 42 male inmates from the county who currently provide labor in exchange for reductions to their sentences.
Under this system, qualified inmates earn a day off their sentences for each day they work.
Hargett said inmates must be classified as minimum-custody to participate in the state-county work program and “earn time.”
A majority of the women who are to be moved into the facility are medium-custody inmates, and those men who are already laboring are minimum-custody.
“Currently 42 (inmates) are going out to work on a regular basis, 12 for the city,” the sheriff said
They provide labor to Greenwood’s city jail, the Leflore County Humane Society Animal Shelter, Mississippi Valley State University, the Mississippi Department of Transportation and Leflore County for services such as mowing, trash cleanup and road work.
“We need to get with the other departments and the city to see whether they will partner to help pay for the needs of the inmates,” Hargett proposed.
He said it costs about $53.70 per day to keep a person incarcerated in Mississippi, according to the last PEER legislative report with which he was familiar.
Warden Banks estimated that it costs about $40 a month to provide each inmate with food.
The warden had not yet compiled a full estimate for what the jail might charge entities for inmate labor.
Hargett said no studies have been completed in Leflore County that would help the warden make such an estimate.
“We don’t want to make any money off of them; we just want to come out even,” Spencer said.
Hargett said such work programs allow incarcerated people to learn job skills and prepare for release into civilian life.
Warden Banks said that to implement the work program successfully, he would need to hire about five new staff members, including a degree-holding case manager. It was unclear whether the cost of these staffers would be factored into the price charged by the jail to those who wish to use inmate labor.
All at the meeting agreed that it would still be more cost-effective for entities to pay the jail rather than take on the economic burden of finding workers outside the penal system.
Spencer said it would be much less expensive to hire five employees to supervise the inmates than 19 to do the jobs inmates are currently performing.
“This is nothing but a drop in the bucket compared to that,” he said.
- Contact Katherine Parker at 662-581-7239 or kparker@gwcommonwealth.com.
