BY JANET WILSON

Staff Writer    1/31/2003

White County's desperate need for a new jail sent White County Judge Bob Parish and Justices of the Peace Harvey Goad, Terry Adams, and Vernon Shourd to Miller County recently to tour its 48,000 square foot, 400 bed facility built at a cost of $8.3 million.

"This county desperately needs a jail," Parish said. "We have simply outgrown our jail."

Parish said the residents of Miller County in southern Arkansas passed a bond issue to construct the new facility.

"It has a mixture of medium and minimum security housing," Parish said. "It has a full-service kitchen, laundry, a medical unit with exam rooms where a doctor comes into the jail to treat the inmates, and sheriff's offices."

The Miller County jail also contains a courtroom so that judges can come on site to conduct court hearings, according to Parish.

"What we have is a temporary Band-Aid," he said.

However, since White County voters have already rejected two ballot measures requesting a tax increase to construct a new detention center, Parish said the prospects don't look good for building a new facility in the near future.

"It takes money," he said. "I don't know where we would get it. If we build a new jail, it would take more food, more clothing, and it would take more guards. We just don't have the money."

The lack of money in county coffers means that the option of adding on to the existing jail is also out of the question, Parish said.

"It takes money to build," he commented.

Because of the current overcrowding crisis at the White County Detention Center, Parish said the sheriff's department essentially has no way to enforce laws such as hot check violations.

"That's not good for our merchants," he added.

Parish said White County could build a jail equitable to the facility in Miller County if voters would approve a half cent permanent sales tax.

He said with the additional revenue generated from such a tax, law enforcement in the rural areas of the county could also be expanded.

"Until people come together and want to build a new facility to house these prisoners, then we'll have to do what we're doing now which is arrest them and turn them loose," Parish said.

"They (the offenders) will keep working the cycle and the sheriff's department will do the best they can."

On Wednesday, 22 inmates, charges with misdemeanor crimes, including 15 men and seven women were released from the jail because of the severe overcrowding.

Additionally, the sheriff's department notified all other local police agencies that it will not accept any misdemeanor offenders in the jail until further notice.