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NATCHEZ—A Texas man whose company built the cell pods that house prisoners at the Adams County Correctional Complex offered his expertise on building a new county correctional facility to the Adams County Board of Supervisors.

Buddy Johns is president of Modcorr, based in Galveston, Texas, which creates modular facilities for the corrections industry. CorrCivic, which owns and operates the Adams County Correctional Complex, has more than 100 of the pods available. CorrCivic has said it would donate them to Adams County for use in a new jail project.

Today, Johns said the pods cost between $40,000 and $50,000 each. However, he said the pods CorrCivic would donate could be refurbished for between $12,000 and $15,000 each.

That would be a savings of up to $4 million on the total cost of building a new jail here.

Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten met Johns at a national law enforcement conference in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

“He (Johns) thought so much of Sheriff Patten, he has reached out to us and offered to help,” said Debbie Germany, who is leading the Justice Complex Citizens Committee.

John said he plans to have his people create a schematic of what the jail would look like using the pods from the Adams County Correctional Complex and a preliminary budget for the cost of building a jail in Adams County within the next 30 to 45 days.

“Buddy Johns is doing this at no cost to us,” Germany said.

“It really pays to attend national conferences,” Patten said. “You never know what networking resources you will make.”

District 3 Supervisor Angela Hutchins said she recently traveled to Washington, D.C., and spoke with U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson about ways the county could fund a new jail.

“We are going to have to build a jail. The jail that we have over there is obsolete. It was built in 1975. Bricks and mortar are falling from it,” Hutchins said. “We need to look at trying to do a bond for this jail, but we need to get a total cost of what the jail would cost first.”

Germany said Johns has a copy of the county’s jail needs assessment and two pieces of property on which the jail could be built. One site is land donated to the county by Jordan Carriers off of U.S. 61 North near Tractor Supply, and the other is property the county already owns near the port.

Germany said the Jordan Carriers property still needs a site assessment and a cost estimate for providing water, sewer, and other utility services. Those utilities are readily available at the port site, she said.