Jackson Jambalaya

 Hinds County Mayors won a round against the Hinds County Board of Supervisors after the Attorney General ruled stated law limits what the county can charge to house inmates in its detention centers.

 The subject has been a sore bone of contention between mayors and supervisors after the Board unanimously voted in August 2024 to start charging municipalities in Hinds County $50 per day to house their prisoners.  Board Attorney Anthony Gaylor notified the respective Mayors of the new policy in a letter: 

On Monday, August 5, 2024, the Hinds County Board of Supervisors voted to charge the various agencies and municipalities that send their detainees to the detention centers in Raymond and the Hinds County Juvenile Justice Center on McDowell Road in Jackson. Currently, there are approximately twenty-four agencies and municipalities that send their detainees to be housed in Hinds County. That has led to thousands of detainees to be housed in Hinds County annually. The cost of housing these detainees is over $3,600,000 per year in medical costs alone. As such, these entities will be charged $50.00 per day from their first day of being housed at the detention centers until they are indicted by a grand jury. The charge is inclusive of many of the costs associated with housing detainees in our detention centers. However, The arresting agency or municipality will be responsible for any medical bills incurred outside of the facility (i.e. hospital visits and required specialized treatments). The charges will begin on October 1, 2024. The entities will be billed on January 1 and July 1 of each year going forward.

Other counties have similar policies. The Madison County Sheriff charges Madison County law enforcement agencies and cities $22 per day.  Entities outside of Madison County pay $50 per day.  Rankin County charges $25 if the agency is in the county. However, the county picks up the tab after the defendant is bound over to the grand jury, not upon indictment as will be the new policy in Hinds County.   Municipal prosecutors usually speed suspects through so they can be bound over to the grand jury and taken off the municipal books.  Suspects sit in jail for months awaiting indictment at the Raymond Convention Center.  Thus this little difference between Hinds and other counties will mean a big difference to municipalities as they pay much more per inmate.  

Hinds County District 1 Supervisor Robert Graham said all of the surrounding counties have been charging law enforcement agencies for housing inmates for quite some time.   The annual costs were over $3 million a year for inmate medical care and $2 million for food.  "Ancillary costs were eating us alive, over a million dollars a year. We are spending several million dollars a year on prisoners who are presumed innocent who have not been indicted," said the supervisor.  The annual budget for Hinds County detention facilities is $10.6 million in the current fiscal year.   

The new revenue will be placed in the general fund of the Hinds County budget instead of the jail's budget.  

The Board might have unanimously voted for the fees but the Hinds County mayors unanimously opposed them.  The mayors of Byram, Clinton, Jackson, Bolton, Edwards, and Raymond argued against the new policy in a January 31, 2025 letter.   

Accordingly, it is the opinion of this office that for holding a municipal pretrial detainee or prisoner in the county jail, a municipality is authorized to pay a county up to $25 per day for days one through thirty and up to $32.71 for days thirty-one or greater.

In the event that prisoners are housed in the county jail by any political subdivision of the state, the county may charge the political subdivision for housing, feeding and otherwise caring for such prisoners an amount not to exceed the payments provided under state law for the keeping in the county jail...

State law limits the fees charged for state prisoners. Section 47-5-909(2) states: 

the Department of Corrections shall pay county jails for housing state offenders out of any available funds as follows:

(a) Twenty-five Dollars ($25.00) per day per offender for days one (1) through thirty (30);

(b) Thirty-two Dollars and Seventy-one Cents ($32.71) per day per offender for days thirty-one (31) or greater

Clinton City Attorney and Mayor-Elect Will Purdie praised the ruling: "I think the Attorney General got it correct.  There are some recent changes in the law that limit municipalities to the MDOC rate.  We will still make the argument we are paying for these services through our taxes.  It certainly sets a ceiling for what the city legally can pay."