Video: Monroe County Keeping Inmates for Work Program

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MONROE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) — After much debate, Monroe County will keep their state county inmates working, at least for now.

Not everyone at the meeting agreed that the benefit of having the inmates outweighs the cost, but with a few tweeks to the program they were able to reach a compromise.

“It’s approximately 18-thousand dollars a year to house a prisoner,” says District 5 Supervisor Robert Tomey.

Continuing to pay that cost was debated again Friday at the Monroe County Board of Supervisors meeting.

Tomey says he’ll be more for it if the cities help foot the bill as well, because right now the numbers don’t add up.

” We set our jail up to handle 60 prisoners,” says Tomey.

Right now around 25 are being housed, but raising that number is now the county’s goal.

“Keep the number of inmates at a high enough level, that it would be better to keep the inmate work program open,” says District 1 Supervisor Doug Wiggins.

Mississippi Department of corrections has already agreed to help them get around 20 more inmates.

“Then we feel like we can get enough viable labor out of the inmates to justify the offset of the cost,” says Wiggins.

It’s a compromise Monroe County Sheriff Cecil Cantrell says you can’t put a price on because the inmates help organizations that really need an extra hand.

“A lot of people throughout our county, municipalities, it helps our schools, it helps our churches, it also helps with our litter pick up throughout our county,” says Sheriff Cantrell.

Tomey says the board will probably not make any cuts to the program this year, but it will be a discussion that continues.