Editor's Note: The print edition of this story incorrectly attribute quotes to Camden County Commissioner Jim Goodman instead of Commissioner Martin Turner. The story below reflects the accurate attribution. The Tribune & Georgian regrets the error.
Something needs to be done about the Camden County jail, but it’s going to be expensive and likely a hard sell to county residents, or so expressed Camden city and county leaders at the first workshop for the county’s ninth special purpose local option sales tax.
County staff project collections for SPLOST IX to be about $80 million, received from July 2025 through June 2031. There are more than $141.1 million in requests, including $50 million for a new public safety complex and $20 million for a new park complex. County Administrator Shawn Boatright indicated that partnering park spending with a new jail might be easier to pitch to voters than just the new jail.
Many of the county’s park amenities are in need of repair, rehabilitation or replacement.
“The whole park idea, the whole park notion, is just to get that out onto the discussion,” Boatright said. “One of the main things is that jails are not popular topics, public safety complexes are not really popular topics…,” though parks are something people can regularly enjoy with family and friends.
Discussion quickly pivoted from the park idea to what to do about the jail. One of the problems noted is there is an unused pod because there’s not enough people to staff it, while the county continues to house detainees in poor conditions.
“The jail itself, if we don’t look at rehabbing it, and utilizing the way it was originally designed, then I think we’re killing ourselves as a community overall by having a new facility,” St. Marys City Manager Robby Horton said. “I’m not making a dig at anybody in the room or anybody that’s not here, but having those 50 beds there that aren’t utilized and have not been utilized, is my understanding from that meeting (earlier with the sheriff).”
However, conditions at the jail are “almost inhuman,” County Commissioner Martin Turner said.
“Those guys that are working (in the jail), they’re working in some horrible circumstances,” Turner said. “I mean, when you look at it, we’re struggling trying to get insurance because of all the lawsuits. I think some of that’s being in a pressure cooker day-in and day-out.”
He said be believed the jail has electrical issues, and know it has climate control problems because of how hot it can get inside. Turner suggested there may be something to beginning with the newer, unused portion of the jail and build around that.
If the county chooses to renovate the current jail and not build a new facility, those detained would need to be placed elsewhere, at a cost of anywhere from $65 to $100 per person per day, while enhancing the present jail to about 200 beds or so, according to the county administrator. The bigger concern, Boatright said, is what to do with the 911 center, though the sheriff’s substation is outfitted as a backup location to the present one. A new facility would have new 911 space along with other office space and supporting facilities.
Local officials have been in contact with the GEO Group about their federal facility in Folkston, but Camden doesn’t provide enough inmates to make the money work. Fulton County had plans to send 1,000 inmates down, on which Camden could’ve piggybacked, but the deal didn’t go through.
GEO, which benefitted financially during the last Trump administration, has post-election growth plans, Boatright said, but it’s unknown the extent or how it might help Camden temporarily house its inmates.
He also pointed out it’s unknown at the moment whether a new jail or a rehabbed jail makes more financial sense.
Several officials involved in the workshop expressed uneasiness at having to sell the new SPLOST to voters, and many spoke up to make the election in March and not November, to allow more time to make the case for the proposal, however it ends up.
“Let’s just say this group decides, for whatever reason, hey, we’re not going to do (a new jail), we don’t want to do it,” Boatright said. “Because if that’s the collective decision of the entire group here, I fear there may be a Department of Justice ruling coming pretty quickly. Just because, I mean, they have sat down from time to time in communities where the community did not want to build a facility, and then they basically issued a mandamus that you will build a facility, and you will build it by X date and time. Which, if you have that, your costs just went up dramatically.”
The conversation on a SPLOST IX package continues, with officials set to return to the College of Coastal Georgia campus in Kingsland to further discuss plans at 4 p.m. April 17.
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Camden County officials are weighing the potential benefits of a future SPLOST.