The Carroll-Montgomery Regional Correctional Facility has problems. I’m not sure the jail’s administration has the ability to correct them.
On Tuesday, Warden Arthur Smith told the Carroll County Board of Supervisors that a guard at the jail had been asked to resign after being accused of trying to deliver cellphones and drugs to inmates.
Smith seemingly had no intention of announcing the action taken against the guard until Beat 5 Supervisor Rickey Corley asked him about it.
Smith and Sheriff Jerry Carver said that the contraband was not delivered and that there was not enough evidence to prosecute the guard, whose name was not released.
Carver said the guard was allowed to resign rather than be fired “so he could not receive unemployment paid for by the county.”
That’s ridiculous. An employee can be fired for cause. If the guard had challenged his firing, the case would have gone before the Mississippi Employment Security Commission. I think being accused of trying to bring contraband into a jail would be sufficient reason for firing a guard.
Or was there something else about this case that jail officials didn’t want being made public?
This is just the latest in a string of troubling incidents at the regional jail in Vaiden during the past year.
Oct. 10, 2011: Inmates Cordellra McCarley and Christopher Coker escaped by climbing three fences in broad daylight. A question that’s yet to be answered: Where were the guards? It obviously wasn’t within sight of the exercise yard.
The two were recaptured in a few days near the jail. Think of all the money that was spent while local, county, state and federal officers searched for these men. Think of the anxiety the people who live near the jail suffered while waiting for the inmates to be caught.
Carver said back in October that an investigation was being conducted into the escape. To date, no public report of the findings of that investigation have been released.
March 11, 2011: A Winona city employee and an inmate were arrested when a jail guard said he saw the employee pass drugs to the inmate.
Frederick Woods of Winona had driven to the jail to pick up inmates who were going to work for the city of Winona. Also arrested was inmate Eric Cox of Ripley, a member of the work crew.
It turns out that Woods was a former inmate at the jail where he worked on the same crew. Jail officials didn’t know this until after Woods’ arrest.
Later, police found a cellphone in a locker that Cox used in Winona.
What can we deduce from this unfortunate year at the regional jail?
• Security is laughably lax.
• Jail officials don’t know anything about the people who come to pick up their inmates for work details. And they don’t know what those inmates do when they go to work outside the jail.
• Transparency is treated as contraband by the officials who run the Carroll-Montgomery Regional Correctional Facility.
Escapes and contraband go with the territory when you lock people up. I know the regional jail isn’t a federal “supermax” prison, but it appears to be a modern lockup. Instead, it seems to be about as secure as the Mayberry town jail.
The jail isn’t the only place where the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department is having problems. Two deputies are facing criminal and civil trials for allegedly shooting into a car in Holmes County.
Carver has called the charges against his deputies “lies.” I’m sure he will be equally dismissive of questions about his ability to run the jail.
As for me, if I lived within walking distance of the Carroll-Montgomery Regional Correctional Facility, I’d be planning to move.
• Contact Charles Corder at 581-7241 or ccorder@gwcommonwealth.com.
