ATTORNEY ASKS THAT STATE INMATES BE REMOVED FROM COUNTY JAIL

Welch Says County Has Shown No Commitment To Remedy Problem

A prisoner-rights attorney enforcing a federal court order has asked the
Mississippi attorney general's office to remove all state inmates from the
Leflore County Jail.

The county has shown no commitment to remedying the overcrowding problem in
the jail, says Jackson lawyer Ron Welch.

"All I wanted was a commitment to build a new jail, and I haven't gotten
that yet," he said. "I'm going to go ahead and conclude the discussion and
request that the state pull its inmates out." He notified the state Tuesday.

A court order under the 1972 Gates vs. Collier lawsuit limits the jail's
capacity to 48 prisoners. On Tuesday, the jail had 94 prisoners, including
38 state inmates.

Under a 1997 court order, a jail accused of violating inmate capacity must
respond with evidence within 90 days of a non-compliance complaint or face
removal of all state inmates.

Welch formally notified the county of its non-compliance in an Oct. 8 letter.

With the state prisoners gone, the county will lose all of its inmate labor
from the jail. That labor saves the county from paying wages for garbage
collection, cooking, and cleaning the jail and Sheriff's Department. The
Mississippi Department of Corrections estimates each working inmate saves
city and county governments $800 to $900 a month.

The county also charges MDOC $20 a day to keep each state inmate in the
jail. Those charges bring in about $280,000 a year for the county,
according to Chancery Clerk Sam Abraham.

Faced with the ultimatum, Robert Moore, president of the Board of
Supervisors, said, "We're just going to have to give him a call and try to
set a meeting. I don't know what the implications are."

But, said Welch, "I'm tired of writing them in good faith and they come
back equivocating."

Welch sent the county two more letters dated March 13 and April 1 offering
a settlement.

In them, he asked the county to pledge to build a new jail in two years. If
the county did not meet the two-year deadline, it would have to pay 1
percent fee of the jail's cost for each month's delay. The county would
also have to pay Welch to monitor the jail conditions once a month under
the $150-an-hour rate set in the Gates vs. Collier trial. For a day's work,
that would be $1,200 a month.

If the county proved it was committed to building a jail, Welch said he
would raise the jail capacity to 65, a previous limit set by the lawsuit.

The Board of Supervisors responded with a letter stating its own intention
to build a jail "in a reasonable amount of time."

After supervisors select a jail site and finalize architectural plans,
construction alone will take about two years, board President Robert Moore
estimates.

But according to Welch, it shouldn't take that long. "From what I hear,
based on Rankin County's facility, you can build a jail in a year, less
than year - a big jail."

Welch wrote in an April 9 letter to Assistant Attorney General Joe Goff: "I
am terminating, effective today, any further settlement discussions with
Leflore County."

Instead of compromising with the county, Welch is now offering to settle
with Mississippi Department of Corrections. Welch will waive a $400,000
fine MDOC owes for contempt of Gates vs. Collier if the department will
remove its prisoners from the Leflore County jail.

Removing the county inmates won't solve the overcrowding problem, Sheriff
Ricky Banks said.

"The problem is we've got about 70 or 80 indictments coming in the next
week or two, and all we're going to do is fill it right back up if they
take them out," he said. "And the narcotics task force has between 80 and
100 drug charges that haven't even been presented to grand jury."