OKTIBBEHA COUNTY – Starkville and Oktibbeha County remain divided over when financial responsibility for felony inmates should shift from the city to the county, an issue Mississippi law doesn’t clearly define and one that could cost the city thousands more annually.
The disagreement centers on how long the city should pay to house felony detainees at Oktibbeha County Jail after arrest. A policy, approved by the county last month, aims to put the onus on Starkville to pay to house city inmates through their indictment, a process which could take months, according to Sheriff Shank Phelps.
As it stands, the city assumes responsibility for inmates until they are arraigned, which occurs after a suspect receives bond and the case is transferred to circuit court, typically taking a matter of weeks.
District 43 State Rep. Rob Roberson, who serves as attorney for the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors, said he and Starkville City Attorney Berk Huskison are negotiating language for a renewed jail agreement that could clarify where that responsibility changes hands.
“The city wants (to shift financial responsibility) after arraignment,” Roberson told The Dispatch on Tuesday. “The county wants it after indictment. We’re putting in our county policy ‘indictment’ until we’re told otherwise.”
If both sides cannot reach consensus, the wording in the agreement could remain open to interpretation, allowing future negotiations between both entities. Roberson said that approach would also allow the agreement to remain in perpetuity if the legislature later establishes a statewide standard.
For decades, the understanding has been that suspects arrested by city police remain municipal inmates until they are bound over to the grand jury – something that usually happens after an initial court hearing if a felony charge is being considered. At that point, they were considered county inmates.
However, in an April 2024 opinion written to the Lincoln County sheriff, the AG’s office wrote, “We are not aware of any statutory authority or case law stating that a city prisoner becomes a county prisoner upon being bound over to the county grand jury at a preliminary hearing.”
Roberson said he interpreted that opinion to mean the AG’s office leaned toward city inmates remaining such until after a grand jury heard their case. Once indicted, they would become a county inmate.
But a more recent AG opinion issued in August 2025 to the Ackerman city attorney clearly states it’s the county’s responsibility to pay expenses for a municipal inmate once the case is bound over to a grand jury – reasserting what had been understood before April 2024. The Ackerman opinion reasserts the law is “silent” on the matter, but it cites AG opinions from 1982, 1992 and 1994 for support – something the 2024 opinion did not.
“It’s been a little bit confusing as to where they’re going to land,” Roberson said. “It would appear to me that they’re saying after arraignment is where they’re landing for the moment. I don’t know that that’s going to be where the legislature goes.”
The county policy presented during supervisors’ April 20 meeting states the current arrangement of transitioning upon arraignment creates financial inequalities between the city and county, while also creating “reverse incentives” in moving cases quickly through the court system.
To that point, Roberson said the sheriff’s office has little control over how quickly investigations and prosecutions advance with city inmates, whereas city police can continue investigating and pushing for timely indictments.
“You could technically have something sit for six or eight months that the sheriff doesn’t have any responsibility of investigating, but (the county) has to be responsible for the (housing costs),” he said.
However, Huskison said the city’s position is that responsibility for felony inmates should shift after arraignment, at which point cases are transferred to circuit court, which is administered at the county level. Municipal courts lack jurisdiction to try felony cases.
“That’s our position, (but) all of that is negotiable,” Huskison told The Dispatch on Tuesday. “… Cities and counties are having this dispute all over the state … and there are different positions taken in different locations, but fortunately with Oktibbeha County and … Starkville, we want to work together … to try to reach an agreement on this that is workable from both sides.
“My thought is that we would prefer to have something specific in the agreement about that issue, but it’s not absolutely necessary,” Huskison added. “The city … and county intends to work together to take care of city and county arrestees to the best of our abilities.”
Daily rates
While the policy’s attempt to define when financial responsibility shifts could ultimately be superseded by a finalized agreement or future state legislation, it would establish clearer inmate housing rates between the city and county.
Under the proposed agreement, daily inmate housing rates would align with the state reimbursement caps counties receive for housing Mississippi Department of Corrections inmates: $25 per inmate per day for the first 30 days and $32.71 per day thereafter.
The attorney general’s office in spring 2025 issued opinions to Oxford and Clinton stating those reimbursement caps also apply to municipalities. Starkville and Columbus, however, currently pay rates above those amounts.
In Columbus, the city agreed with Lowndes County in 2022 to a graduated payment scale that began at $30 per inmate per day in the first year, $35 the second year and $45 for the third year onward. After the attorney general’s opinion was issued in March, Columbus simply stopped paying its jail invoices, with city officials claiming the city had “overpaid” for those services to the tune of $165,000 over the 2 1/2 years it paid a higher rate than statute allows.
Mayor Lynn Spruill said Starkville has paid $30 per inmate per day for 12 guaranteed jail beds “since the beginning,” totaling about $131,400 annually, not including inmates housed beyond that allotment.
However Spruill said the city has no plans to stop paying invoices to recoup those costs.
“I don’t want to create a rift between us and the county,” Spruill told The Dispatch on Tuesday. “We need to work together on things, and I did not find that to be anything that was their fault, nor our fault.”
A bill aiming to make $25 per day the minimum instead of the cap died in conference during this year’s legislative session.
“The legislature was looking at making this standard language across the state, and we could not get a standard language that both would be fair to the cities and the counties, bringing them together in terms of either equally thinking it’s a fair assessment, or equally thinking it’s not a fair assessment,” Roberson said. “It was just one of those things that we just could not get the language quite the way we wanted.”
However, if the city does not sign the proposed agreement, the county could charge them a flat-fee of $35 per day.
“The AG’s opinion is an opinion, just like my opinion,” Roberson said. “… That being said (the AG’s office) does have to approve these contracts.”
However, Huskison said the daily rates are not a major concern for him.
“As best I can tell, we agree on those daily numbers,” he said. “There’s not been a lot of back and forth on that. The only question is how long they can stay city arrestees versus moving over to county.”
Spruill said the dispute will ultimately require legislative action to resolve the matter.
“I think this is one of those things that is going to end up being solved through legislative action,” Spruill said. “It was before the legislature this last term, and because there was no agreement on how to handle it, it got pushed. I do think that they’ll be looking at how we can address both the bound over versus the indictment, as well as the costs associated with it … in the next legislative term.”
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