Alcorn Community Work Center Closed

MDOC PRESS RELEASE

JACKSON – The Mississippi Department is temporarily closing a second community work center.

Work crews are no longer available at the Alcorn County Community Work Center in Corinth.

“This closure is not related to our decision to remove state inmates from the Alcorn County Regional Facility on Oct. 29,” Commissioner Marshall Fisher said. “We are suspending operations at the CWC until further notice for security reasons.”

With the Alcorn CWC’s closure, MDOC now operates 15 community work centers statewide.

“We are evaluating all community work centers,” Fisher said. “We are constantly assessing and reassessing how well we are carrying out our mission to maintain public safety, and when we find the need to make changes in the interest of public safety, we make them.”

Like the Jefferson County Community Center in Fayette, which closed in May and has not reopened, the Alcorn CWC can no longer be adequately staffed, Fisher said.

The 13 employees at the center are transferring to other jobs in the prison system.

Unlike other CWCs, the Alcorn CWC has housed inmates receiving long-term alcohol and drug (A&D) treatment.  Some of the Joint State County work inmates removed from the Alcorn County Regional Facility were temporarily located there as well.

Most of the 90 offenders at Alcorn as of a month ago have been moved to other A&D units, CWCs and JSCW programs. By the end of the week, all offenders should be moved.

Though there is no timetable for reopening the Alcorn CWC, the county’s loss of inmate labor from the regional jail may be temporary.

“We have already started transition talks with the new sheriff (Ben Caldwell),” Fisher said.