Sheriff Countryman’s case for a new jail
Muscogee County Sheriff Greg Countryman wants the public to know about the bad conditions in the Muscogee County Jail. Friday morning he invited a host of city leaders and the media to join him on a tour of the facility.
“This is… it’s unacceptable.” In a word, that’s how Mayor Skip Henderson described the conditions he saw on the tour. He was joined by City Manager Isaiah Hugley, Police Chief Stoney Mathis, School Superintendent David Lewis, and about two dozen other city leaders. Throughout the tour they had to dodge buckets placed beneath leaks in the ceiling.
The Sheriff says plumbing has been the biggest issue at the jail. “You can see the holes in the ceiling. The water is coming from somewhere. We have a plumbing contractor here every single day at $300 an hour. I want the public to know what we’re dealing with. I want them to see what the staff has to work in.”
After the tour, Chief Mathis said, “It’s troubling. When you walk through the jail and you’ve got leaking water actually dripping out of the ceiling while you’re trying to walk through, it’s troubling.
The Chief added, “I know the sheriff has been contending with this for a long time now, and I think right now we have the mayor and the council in place to vote to give the sheriff a new jail, and I think it’s beneficial to both him, the police department, and the citizens.”
Countryman says the efforts to try to get a new jail have been underway for three years, and he’s trying to do his due diligence. “We’ve gone up to different jails to look at different designs so we can know what not to do.”
Mayor Henderson says the ball is rolling. Consultants have been engaged. “The jail is crowded and it’s got some serious issues. We’ve got to continue to move forward with this design team so that we can figure out the best way to approach it, whether it’s a renovation or a rebuild. In my opinion, I don’t think you can renovate this. I think you’re going to have to rebuilt it.”
The jail has two towers. One was built in 1984 and the other in 2004. Besides the infrastructure issues, Sheriff Countryman says there’s an overcrowding problem. The jail has a capacity of 1,069 inmates. Today’s population is 1,057. Countryman says last week they were over capacity.
When asked about a timetable, the Sheriff said, “I would love to see it tomorrow. We will probably start to have the conversations once all of the drawings and designs and all of the approval comes in from the council of how we’re going to get it done, then that’s when we can move on it faster. But the longer we wait, it’s going to cost more money.”
At the same time, the Sheriff added, “We need to make this about common sense, not dollars and cents.”
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