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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