Some

residents' fears that a new jail will mean increased

danger in downtown Fayetteville are misplaced, according

to Fayette County Sheriff Randall Johnson.

"If

you move the jail away from the court, that's when you've

got a major problem [with safety]," Johnson told The

Citizen this week in response to criticism from

residents.

The best

example of that, he said, is Clayton County, were

officials were forced to build a new county jail more

than a mile away from the courthouse. Transporting

prisoners from the jail to give them their day in court

has become dangerous, Johnson said.

"They

have to bus the prisoners back to Jonesboro, and it's

been a headache for them," he said.

Fayette

County commissioners currently are considering funding

options for a $60 million project that includes enlarging

the current jail, building a new county courthouse and

linking the two facilities with an underground tunnel.

In the

longer term, plans for the 65-acre site of the jail and

courthouse include a new administrative building as well

as a senior center, plus possible future additions to the

jail.

"Everybody

wants to put everybody in jail," said Johnson,

"but when the time comes to deal with the reality,

they don't see it that way. This is a jail, just like

we've had here since the 1800s," he added.

Johnson has

responded to residents opposed to the project before, in

an open letter to The Citizen and in public forums, but

his answers and those of county commissioners have not

satisfied Denise and Jim Fair, residents of a subdivision

near downtown.

The Fairs'

letters to the editor are included in this week's opinion

section. Jim Fair accuses county officials of a

"shell game," and writes that local elementary

schools were locked down twice in 1998 due to escapes

from the county courthouse. "The jail expansion is

planned to include an enlarged county courthouse, so it

is only reasonable to expect that a larger facility will

increase the likelihood of this risk to the surrounding

community," wrote Fair.

In her

letter, Denise Fair cites lock-downs at local schools due

to officers chasing escapees, and quotes school

officials' and students' eyewitness accounts of "an

individual being apprehended by officers across their

playground" four years ago.

Schools

occasionally are locked down, which means doors are

locked to prevent dangerous people from entering,

confirmed Fayette superintendent of schools Dr. John

DeCotis, but in the instance four years ago, the person

had escaped from Fayetteville municipal court, not the

county jail, he said.

There's no

documentation of such incidents, DeCotis said, but he

added that numerous lock-downs occurred last year in

response to shootings at Columbine High School in

Colorado.

And he is

aware of at least one lock-down at East Fayette

Elementary School last year after a thief stole some

tools at a nearby hardware store and then ran toward the

school when police arrived.

Johnson

said no prisoner has ever escaped from Fayette County

Jail in the 20-plus years of its existence, adding that

he believes the new jail will be safer than the current

one because prisoners will be transported to and from

court in a tunnel.

And

regardless of opposition, he said, local officials have

no choice but to build a new jail. "It's not left up

to us," he said. "We wish we didn't have to

build the jail, but it's going to be left to the federal

courts if we keep stalling."

The jail

currently holds twice as many prisoners as it was

designed for, he said, and the number of detainees will

continue to increase regardless of whether the jail is

enlarged. But eventually, Johnson added, someone will

file suit to redress the overcrowded conditions, and the

courts have a history of ordering counties and cities to

build larger, more elaborate jails than are needed, and

to get them built in less time than is required to do a

proper job.

As for some

residents' suggestion that the jail be moved to a

sparsely populated area to reduce the danger, Johnson

pointed out that state law requires that the courthouse

be in the county seat, and he added that the dictates of

safety demand that the jail be as near the courthouse as

possible.

"I

can't promise that we'll never [have an escape],"

Johnson said, "but we're going to build a secure

jail. We don't have a problem [with escapes] now, and

we're not going to have one," he vowed.

Residents

also have argued that enlarging the jail will bring more

criminals into the county, but Johnson said the number of

prisoners will increase regardless of whether there's

adequate space to house them. The new jail will simply

provide safer, more manageable housing, he said.

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