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Article published Apr 11, 2008 Company that designed Blount Jail indicted
By Joel Davis of The Daily Times Staff
A Georgia-based company that contracted to design and oversee construction of the current Blount County jail in the 1990s has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of bribery.
The Asheville Citizen-Times reported Wednesday that the Facility Group has been accused of bribing the governor of Mississippi to get a $55 million state contract. In the article, the newspaper quoted Blount County Sheriff James Berrong as saying the Facility Group had made cuts in the number of cameras being installed in the facility, creating conditions that led to a lawsuit.
The jail should have 80 observation cameras, but the Facility Group trimmed that down to 60 cameras. There is no camera in the pat-down area of the jail, which is the alleged site of an incident cited in the lawsuit.
Jamey Southerland, 34, Morristown, filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Knoxville in 2007, naming Blount County, Blount County Sheriff Berrong, the Blount County Sheriff’s Office and specific jailers and supervisors. The suit stems from an incident in October 2006 when Southerland was arrested by a Maryville police officer on a charge of DUI. He was taken to the Blount County Jail, where he alleges his arm was broken during an unprovoked altercation in the pat-down room. Afterwards, he was held for hours and was not given medical attention for his injuries, Southerland said.
According to his lawsuit, Southerland is seeking $500,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.
“(The Facility Group was) the liaison between the architect and the owner, which was the county,” Berrong said. “What the sheriff’s office mainly relied on was the architectural firm.”
Despite the camera location flaws, the ultimate logistical design of the jail was well done, Berrong said.
The jail opened in June 1999. It was built between 1997 and ’99.
The Blount County Budget Committee will be discussing whether to finance an expansion of the existing jail site using room-and-board money paid for housing federal prisoners.
According to an April 7 memo to the Budget Committee, Finance Director Dave Bennett estimates a $7 million bond for the project could be paid off in 10 years with the county still reaping net revenues estimated from $417,404 the first year to $1.5 million per year in later years, about $12.1 million in all.
The daily rate that the U.S. Marshals Service pays to house federal inmates in the Blount County Jail is $58.50 per inmate. In the 2006-2007 fiscal year, the Sheriff’s Office brought in more than $2.1 million in revenue to the Blount County general fund by housing federal inmates. Through June 30, this will have brought in an estimated $3.3 million to the county.