NATCHEZ — Before Gov. Phil Bryant picked up his pen Monday to sign the Juvenile Detention Licensing Act into law, Adams County was already ahead of the game.

The new law requires the licensing of all of the state’s juvenile detention facilities by October 2017. The act gives licensing authority to the state’s Juvenile Facilities Monitoring Unit in the Mississippi Department of Public Safety.

“We are already up to date,” Adams County Youth Court Judge Walt Brown said Monday about the Adams County Juvenile Justice Center. “From all indications, we already meet the standards for licensure.”

Brown said some changes in staff standards may have to be made, but everything else is ready for the state’s review later this fall.

John Hudson, Brown’s predecessor and Jurist in Residence at the Mississippi Supreme Court, said the county was already prepared for the new law.

“As soon as (the state) developed a set of minimum standards for juvenile justice facilities, we instituted them in the Adams County facility.”

Hudson said the bill has been the result of two years of studies and hard work. Hudson led the Juvenile Detention and Alternatives Task Force and pushed for the passage of the bill.

“I think it is a huge step forward in juvenile justice in Mississippi,” Hudson said. “It is good for the children going into the facility and important for the facility itself.”

Hudson said the new law means that when children are sent to facilities safety and the children’s well-being are priorities.

“The main thing that (the new law) does is it creates minimum standards for all of our detention facilities to make certain that children who are detained are safely detained,” Hudson said.

“The purpose was to create minimum standards that would benefit both the detention facility and make sure that children housed there would be housed safely and cared for appropriately.

“The primary reason was the safety of the kids. Those standards first and foremost are to protect those children who have to be detained. It also protects the facilities. It gives them a standard to qualify under, which protects them from lawsuits.”