Renovations to the women's facility are in the works and have been since May.
However, the county department of corrections announced Monday during the Bolivar County Board of Supervisors meeting that none of the staff will be furloughed during the construction.
Maintaining the current staff was one of the initial concerns with the project.
“Our intent at this time now is to keep 20 of our (state) female offenders here while we are renovating,” said Deputy Warden Tracy Hays. “They are working.”
Because of the nature of the renovations this will call for the 20 females from the state and the county females to be relocated.
“We are going to move our county females to our main building,” Hays explained. “That's where we had them before we had the women's facility.
“We're going to move our state inmates to where they were on the county side of our women's facility,” she continued.
When complete, the renovations will make the women's facility easier to manage from a central location.
These renovations will not be major overhauls.
The new facility will restructure the dormitory section so that two separate dorms — one for state prisoners and one for county holdings — can be monitored from one central watch post.
“We're just putting up two walls and building a control post,” said Warden Tommy Taylor in a previous interview. “What we're gonna do is move our current county holding pre-trial area for females into the area where the other state females are housed.
“But it will be a separate dormitory, it will just be manned by one post, instead of two,” Taylor continued.
By rearranging the inmates as planned, the county will be able to maintain its staff.
“Our hope and intent with this is to maintain our staff,” said Hays. “What we're going to do is move four of those female correctional officers over to the main unit and maintain four at the women's facility.”
“In other words, you're going to stabilize staff,” asked Supervisor Richard Coleman. “You're just going to lose some residents?”
“Yes,” responded Hays. “We're able to retain all of our staff members right now.”
Funding for the project is being taken out of the correctional facility budget.
“The funding is coming out of my current budget,” Taylor explained in May. “Inmate labor is going to do the work. It's not really that expensive.
“It'll just shut down our facilities for a few weeks,” he continued.
The construction is slated to take about six weeks to complete.