MCSO hosting open house for jail expansion

Madison County Sheriff Julian Wiser had a key update on the expansion of the jail at the Criminal Justice Center at last week’s County Commission meeting.

It’s been close to being ready to open since before he took office in September of 2022, and it’s had to pass a number of inspections and hire personnel to efficiently house inmates in it.

They’re near enough to that point that Wiser has scheduled an open house for the expansion on March 9 from 5-8 p.m.

The public is invited, but he gave a personal invite to the commissioners during their meeting.

“I encourage all commissioners to come get a tour and wear your tennis shoes because it’s an eighth of a mile walk to see everything,” Wiser said. “But y’all bought and paid for it, so come see what you paid for.”

In addition to tours, there will be ID and fingerprint kits for children as well as recruitment material for anyone interested in a job with MCSO at the jail or on patrol.

Wiser did warn the Commission of a couple of unknowns that will probably have some kind of effect on the County’s finances, and they are utilities and direct supervision.

“Utilities are an unknown because we don’t have a good idea of how much it will cost for those utilities each month,” Wiser said. “But I’ll be working with the finance committee about that in the future.”

Wiser also mentioned direct supervision because there are state and federal regulations of how many jailers are needed for certain numbers of inmates.

Wiser also is taking over the anti-litter initiatives for the County as his office has secured grants to fund anti-litter campaigns.

“When you drive throughout this city and county, you see we’ve got a bad problem with litter,” Wiser said. “So we have to tackle that through education for our young kids and an enforcement component too.

“But it’s something we’ll have to work together in the city and the county to pick up trash.”

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news