Economy expected to delay jail Public defender pool could see fewer members, pay cuts

Published 12:15 pm Thursday, May 27, 2010

Construction and financing for a new jail is looking more unlikely for the upcoming budget year due to the economy, while the pool of private attorneys who represent poor people accused of crimes in Warren County might shrink slightly and be paid less, according to members of a local justice system committee.

Colorado-based Voorhis/Robertson Justice Services recommended a modernized jail built on 30 to 50 acres with enough space to expand to 650 inmates. The current local capacity is 128.

The likely price tag would be about $30 million plus millions more in annual operational costs.

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Concerns about less tax collections through 2010-11 and cuts already in the works to counteract the rest of this year’s spending have all but pushed site selection and financing back a year.

“As Richard George always says, ‘The economy’s driving this train.’ The economy’s about train-wrecked, I think,” District 1 Supervisor David McDonald said, adding he was also speaking for the rest of the county board. “Until we find out exactly what this economy’s going to do, what the state’s going to do, I don’t see us doing anything…. Voorhis would like us to have a site picked by August. Unless someone’s wiling to donate it to us, we don’t have the money to buy 20 to 30 acres to put a jail on right now.”

State law allows counties to purchase or be given land to build government buildings including jails, but an Attorney General’s opinion in 2009 interpreted it to mean it had to be built inside municipal limits — throwing the use of land at Ceres industrial park into doubt. Two vacant tracts inside the city have been vetted, one between Alcorn Drive and Martin Luther King Boulevard and another off Mississippi 27 and East Clay Street, but both would require extensive leveling and either additional or widened access roads, McDonald said.

Municipal inmates are sent by the City of Vicksburg mainly to Issaquena County, with costs there running about $500,000 in recent years.

State prisoners, who have stood trial and thus are eligible for work details and such, cannot be housed locally due to the county’s loss of certification to do so due to the current jail’s conditions.

“I was kind of under the impression we were at a crisis stage,” said County Prosecutor Ricky Johnson, adding McDonald’s comments on the jail amounted to tabling the whole matter for now. McDonald replied that the matter isn’t being tabled so much as supervisors were taking a “wait and see” approach for the coming budget year.

District 4 Supervisor Bill Lauderdale termed the drive to a new jail as a sales pitch with an inescapable public cost.

“It’s even more incumbent on us to educate the public that it’ll take a tax increase to build a jail,” Lauderdale said.

Reducing the number of indigent defense attorneys was suggested by the consultants after pointing out that almost all jailed people here are pretrial detainees. Moving cases to a resolution more quickly, the consultant said, is essential to controlling costs.

Others suggestions involved regular management of the jail population and more alternative sentences.

Specifics won’t come until midsummer on how much the county is willing to pay attorneys in a revamped system.

A part-time system with caps is where agreement began and ended during an hour of talks by an informal committee formed earlier this year on the planning consultant’s recommendations.

“We’re not against (a part-time public defender system),” Senior Circuit Judge Isadore Patrick said of reducing the 30 to 40 attorneys routinely appointed to defend those who assert no ability to pay a lawyer. Indigent defense costs ballooned to more than $500,000 in 2009 and have surpassed this year’s budget outlay with four months left in fiscal 2010. About $350,000 to $375,000 needs to be cut from the rest of this year’s spending to balance the books heading into 2010-11, according to recent calculations.

State law allows counties to create and fund a public defender staff. Most operate in counties with higher populations than Warren. The advantages are predictability of costs and, according to reports, faster processing of cases.

Mentioned numerous times by local officials as a model is Rankin County’s five-person staff, consisting of one lead counsel and four assistants and paid $43,000 and $38,000, respectively.

Patrick said he doubted any fewer than 15 attorneys could handle the 9th Circuit District’s case load and voluntary participation would determine effectiveness in a revamped system.

For decades here, the practice has been for circuit judges to assign cases to local attorneys willing to participate in an informal rotation.

The attorneys then submit bills to the court based on the hours spent and judges have the power to approve or modify fees.

“We’re just saying that if we’re given a proposed budget by the board, we probably could stay within that by capping the public defender fees for certain pleas — or all pleas,” Patrick said, adding a letter will go out to members of the Warren County Bar Association to gauge interest. Most cases are resolved before trial.

The circuit district, which includes Sharkey and Issaquena counties, handled 689 cases in 2009 and 281 for 2010 to date, a figure that includes indictments and no-bills, District Attorney Ricky Smith said.

During a brief session with county supervisors Monday, Patrick and fellow Circuit Court Judge Jim Chaney said a $700 per-case cap was a starting point and state law allowed $1,000.

“We’ll know by the July grand jury how many we have on board,” Chaney said. That month’s list of cases to be deemed worthy of trial begins July 26. If a staffing and pay arrangement is buttoned up by then, it could be put into use Oct. 11.

Other committee members present Wednesday were Sheriff Martin Pace, District 2 Supervisor William Banks, Youth Court Administrator Rachel Hardy and Warren Yazoo Mental Health executive director Don Brown.