Planning for new juvenile center begins

JACKSON, Tenn. — A new juvenile detention center in Madison County is in the works.

The Madison County Juvenile Detention Center Planning Subcommittee met Monday morning to start the planning process of a new juvenile detention center.

“Our center is very old, outdated. It needs to be bigger. It certainly needs other services that we can’t provide now because we don’t have the room, and so it’s been needed for a long time,” said Madison County Mayor Jimmy Harris.

Harris says the Juvenile Detention Center was number two on the Long-range planning Committee list, with Pope School being number one.

They are discussing potential locations and the size of the facility to help them plan over the next several months.

“We will decide on a firm, talk to them about a contract and what it would cost us to get through this phase. And then we go to the county commission to get funding for that phase of it,” Harris said.

One of the main priorities of building the new facility is space.

“I think as much as anything, we need more beds. We have, right now, we have eight beds. And so if we have a female juvenile, then that restricts three beds from our use because there’s four on one side four on the other and you can’t mix them,” Harris said.

Harris says the detention center will better suit the needs of the juveniles incarcerated.

“They have different needs that we need to try to address while they’re incarcerated. One thing is mental health. One thing is schooling and things like that. So we just don’t have the capacity to do it in the way we need to do it now, and so we hope to be able to do that once we get the facility designed and and built,” Harris said.

Harris says the committee will be discussing potential locations, the size of the facility, and choosing a firm these next few months.

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