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NATCHEZ — Experts who conducted the needs assessment for a jail for Adams County said the county needs a jail facility that can house 214 inmates.

Their recommendation on the size of the facility the county needs to construct varies based on changes in certain scenarios. Still, if data remains the same, 214 is the number based on the status quo, the consultants said.

They based that recommendation on a myriad of data, including Adams County’s population trends, the average daily population of the jail dating back a number of years and the average length of stay of inmates here.

The county’s Board of Supervisors agreed to fund the needs assessment, which was performed by Justice Planners, a jail and detention planning and consulting company, in cooperation with Detention Operations LLC.

Personnel from that group spent time in Natchez in the late summer and fall, gathering a myriad of data that resulted in recommendations for what kind of facility Adams County needs, should the decision be made by county leadership to construct a new jail.

The county’s Board of Supervisors have been battling with the deteriorating condition of the jail for at least 20 years. Constructed in the early 1970s, the multi-floor facility’s design has been determined to be antiquated to the point that it puts jail staff in danger. Equipment, such as the locking mechanism on jail doors, plumbing and other building systems do not operate or do not operate properly and the jail has been condemned.

After inmates flooded the facility in August 2023, Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten closed the jail and today only houses inmates with mental health issues or those who will be in the jail for only a very short amount of time. Other pre-trial detainees in the county and those from the city’s police department are now transported to the Concordia Parish Correctional Facility. The county and the city now contracts with them to hold pre-trial prisoners.

Patrick Jablonski, Ph.D., who presented the data collected, said his group worked with the Center for Population Studies at the University of Mississippi, whose research predicts the Adams County population to remain basically steady with a population 1 percent smaller in 2050.

“You are not growing, certainly not at any quick rate, so there is no fear from the booking end of things for population growth,” he said.

The consultants reconstructed the population of the jail each day, based on jail booking data.

“Your population in the jail is generally climbing over time…It’s growing at a regular rate, year over year. You were in a position that you had to take in anyone who was brought to you and keep them there and keep them safe and you had more and more of them coming to you with each passing year,” Jablonski said.

The average daily population rate at the Adams County Jail in 2018 was 65 inmates. That increased to 72 in 2019 and dropped to 68 in 2020. The average daily population was 75 in 2021 and increased to 87.5 in 2022. It dropped to 80.1 in 2023 and jumped to 97.3 in 2024, which is 49.8 percent larger than the average daily population in 2018.

He said the two factors involved with determining jail populations is the number of bookings and the average length of stay of inmates.

The average daily bookings have remained largely flat since 2018, Jablonski said, from 3.9 per day to 3.6 per day in 2024. However, he said while bookings into the jail have decreased, the average daily population has increased because inmates are spending more time in the jail before cases are being disposed of.

The average length of stay year to date in 2024 is 44 percent higher than it was in 2023 and 94 percent higher than it was in 2019.

Jablonski said data shows that six of the 75 people released in July 2024 had been in jail for more than a year.

Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten said he was not surprised at the recommended number of beds for a facility in Adams County.

“I’ve done my own calculations and my number was 200 and y’all just put up 214, so that’s in line with what I was thinking,” he said.

Chief Stanley Searcy, who oversees the jail, said he was not surprised by the recommended size of the facility.

“Chief (Shane) Daugherty and I have danced around 180 to 200, so to see those numbers, that’s really not surprising,” he said.

Searcy praised the county’s Circuit Court judges. He said they have been meeting monthly to go over the cases of the inmates in the jail, aimed at decreasing the length of stay for the pre-trial inmates.

In turn, Sixth District Circuit Court Judge Debra Blackwell praised District Attorney Tim Cotton. She said he has been committed to clearing up a backlog of cases and getting his office organized and back on track.

“I am hoping that it gets better,” she said, referring to the average length of stay of inmates. “I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that there’s been a backlog of mental health evaluations. We’ve had a good number of people who have been deemed mentally incompetent by the Mississippi State Hospital so once you get that mental evaluation and determine that they are mentally incompetent, then you send them to a bed at Whitfield for them to be restored to competency hopefully.

“The problem has been getting a bed for them at Whitfield, which has been taking a year. Now, Whitfield is in the process of building 80 additional beds, so I am hoping that will help us with our average length of stay numbers,” Blackwell said.

Debbie Germany, who is leading the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, said the consulting group will be in Natchez in January to present findings to the Adams County Board of Supervisors.