From left to right: Jacqueline Jones, her husband Rev. Jesse L. Jones, Jr. and Newport Mayor Roland “Trey” Dykes, III. The mayor presented Jones with a proclamation from the city marking March 19 a day of celebration in honor of his service to the ministry and people of Newport.
NEWPORT, Tenn. — After more than 14 years leading the congregation at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Newport, Reverend Jesse L. Jones, Jr. has left to pastor at Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Morristown.
Jones was celebrated at the Community Center in March, where more than 70 people came to send him off and wish him well. Perhaps the most exciting part of that day – and least expected – came when City Mayor Roland “Trey” Dykes, III presented Jones with a proclamation stating that March 19 will be a day of celebration in honor of Rev. Jesse L. Jones, Jr.
Melinda Goodrum is a member of the church who says she had many great conversations with the reverend and considers him close. She said he was touched by the proclamation, and fellow church member Shedenna Dockery said the gesture brought him nearly to tears.
“He was like, ‘This was so nice guys, I didn’t expect that,” Goodrum said. “He’s one of those people that you can’t do enough for him. He deserves any flowers you can give him.”
Jones was asked to pastor in 2007 when Macedonia Baptist Church was looking for a pastor. Now, as they look again, Jones thanks the city of Newport and the congregation of Macedonia Baptist Church.
“I want to express our gratitude – Jacqueline and I – to Macedonia Baptist Church for allowing us to minister to them over these 14 and a half years,” he said. “I cannot stress the love that Jacqueline and I have for Newport, for Macedonia and our sister churches. I really would love to express that to the highest: that it was not an easy thing to do for us to trust God in this fashion, and we truly miss and love our Macedonia family and our community, and to keep us in your prayers as we endeavor to continue to do what the good Lord would have us to do.”
Rev. Jesse L. Jones, Jr., former pastor of Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, introduces a keynote speaker during the 2019 Diversity Banquet. Jones has worked to bring unity between different Newport communities. Duay O’Neil
Jones has worked to unify the community across denominations and different churches as part of Unity in the Community, a movement of the Holy Spirit to mitigate division and bring the community together.
Jones also serves his community as Student & Family Support Coach at Austin-East High School in Knoxville, where he lives with his wife. He serves the school system through Project Grad, a project for helping children reach their potential, which he says keeps him busy.
“I thoroughly enjoy that ministry as well. I call it a ministry because that’s what it is to me,” he said. “Helping our children and their families with their social challenges, just helping support our families, whatever social needs they need in order for the children to get to school safe, to be nurtured, to receive their education, to graduate and to move on to college, or technical school.”
Although the work of Project Grad is well known, and well-received in the press, Jones practices the love that he preaches in his community, even where there are no guarantees of recognition, but where he is needed nonetheless.
Dockery said even if a person was not a member of the church, Jones would show up for them.
“He would just be there,” Dockery said. “If someone was sick, or someone else had died, there was Reverend Jones.”
Goodrum nodded along.
“He has done more funerals for people he don’t know,” she said, laughing, to which Dockery agreed and interjected, saying he is an all-around good guy.
“It’s not like, ‘I’m going to show up on Sunday, and then I’m going back home to Knoxville,’” Dockery said. “No! He was two or three times a week, like, ‘What are you doing here?’”
Dockery said over the years Jones showed up unexpectedly in her own life.
“My aunt’s funeral in Knoxville, I didn’t know he knew her,” she said. Again, Dockery asked him, “What are you doing here?”
Goodrum said Jones passes all her personality checks.
“I am not a nice person,” she said. “If I don’t like you, trust and believe I will tell you. Jesse Jones—I can not find a reason not to like this man. He’s just a good person, and he likes me, in spite of myself.”
Jones said he was sad to leave Newport – observing that there are no differences between God’s children here, and those in Morristown, where he started working in late March – but that it was here where he learned the love of the community.
“I’ve really been graced in love, love of the community,” he said. “I am speaking of all the churches in and around the area. I’ve had a wonderful opportunity and time to fellowship with so many various congregations and churches there in Newport. You have family and friends, from church to church, and it did not matter if they were Baptist, or Methodist, or AME Zion, or even nondenominational. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the pastors in the community, the people in the community, and our families in the community. Very special.”
It was the Holy Spirit that brought him to Newport in the first place, Jones says, and it is the Holy Spirit that continues to guide him to his new work in Morristown.
Final statement from Rev. Jesse L. Jones, Jr.:
Sister Jacqueline and I would like to thank God, the Macedonia Baptist Church, our sister churches, ministers of the gospel, and the Newport community for your prayers, love and support for us over the past 14 plus years. It has been an honor and a blessing to be in service and fellowship with you and we thank God for you all.
NEWPORT, Tenn. — Decades before the jail lost its accreditation, Cocke County has needed a new justice center. There is space. There are plans. However, the county has been unable to find the roughly $50 million it would require to overhaul the jail system. Final costs for such a project would likely exceed the entire county budget.
There does not seem to be a federal solution, nor a state solution that does not involve raising a tremendous amount of capital to fund an entirely new jail. Jail certification is not a priority in Tennessee, as indicated by a significant number of other county jails also lacking certification, but jails lose their accreditation – like Cocke County did – when they are deemed unfit for inmates, signaling a human rights crisis. Counties are left to decide on their own whether they are willing to live with that suffering in a segment of the population that can not speak up for themselves.
The latest County Legislative Body decision not to impose new taxes for the purpose of building a new jail comes as a surprise to no one.
The problem is so seemingly permanent that although some political candidates offer generalized solutions in their platforms, renovating the jail after 90 years is no longer an election issue. After another failed vote in March, Commissioner Forest Clevenger appealed to the CLB for a better solution than simply raising taxes.
“It’s an election year and we have several candidates running for mayor and sheriff, and I have listened to some of their platforms on social media and through others,” Clevenger said. “Some of them think they have a better plan and that we don’t have to do it this way. I’m all ears. If they have one and we don’t have to do this, I want to hear it.”
Clevenger said that in his three years serving county government, no elected official has offered a viable plan or solution.
“You have a finance director, county mayor and sheriff you all are paying $272,000 a year and yet I’ve heard nothing.”
At a forum in March, County Trustee Rob Mathis said the county could pay the annual debt expense of a new jail using an equivalent tax revenue increase, already in progress. Other proposals heard in the past would require raising property taxes.
“I want to hear something that we may have missed after doing this in all these committees for three and a half years, day in and day out,” Clevenger said. “If there is something better we can do I want to know about it because right now we’re facing a $50 million bond issue that our children will be paying off.”
The matter was sent back to General Committee, but is not shown on the agenda for Thursday night.
Whatever the solution may be, it appears that every option in the conversation pits taxpayers against the county’s most vulnerable people, including the mentally ill and those suffering from addiction. Addiction accounts for the bulk of police reports, which end with the phrase, “for their safety, they were arrested and transported to the Cocke County Jail Annex.” These reports are publicly available, provided under Freedom of Information Act guidelines that may protect some sensitive information, such as the addresses of deputies, but do little to preserve the dignity of the parties involved.
A combination of indifference toward incarcerated people, distrust of government, historical discrepancies between stated intent and actual use of county funds, and county-wide poverty has instilled a near-universal resistance in citizens to agree to increase their own tax rates.
While the problem is deferred meeting by meeting, and the conversation goes nowhere, and while users tell jokes about it on Facebook, people have died, they are sleeping on the floor in black mold and more than 20 women are sharing a single toilet.
When the subject arises of poor jail conditions, it is easily dismissed with the refrain, ‘Jail is not supposed to be fun.’ Guards and inmates will attest that Cocke County jail is punishment, and indeed not fun, but it is also dysfunctional to the extent that it fails to serve the community. The intended outcome of prison or jail time is to play a role in rehabilitating offenders so that society is improved by the jail as a service, instead of compounding harm through punishment alone. Moreover, conditions at the Cocke County Jail and Annex prevent the most important stage of incarceration – and its stated purpose – rehabilitation, from taking place.
Because of conditions in the jail, people actively working to resolve drug dependency are hindered from completing that already difficult and sensitive work, says Director of Recovery Ministries Marta Cogburn.
Cogburn is a family nurse practitioner working to rehabilitate people in Cocke County who struggle with substance issues, many of whom come into her program from the jail. She says the county has several issues with social resources, and that conditions in the jail complicate her work curbing substance misuse, calling the conditions there “horrendous.”
“One of the shortcomings is the jail, and the overcrowded conditions,” she says. “That is an inhumane place. I was in the women’s cell. They’re sleeping on the floor, on a mat on the concrete floor. It’s no wonder they fight—bring drugs in—they have to live through it. It’s a horrendous thing, until we can make that more humane by getting better services tailored to the needs of the patient.”
Tennessee Department of Correction data shows that the Cocke County jail population consistently exceeds the number of beds.
At the time photos were taken in February, a jail administrator said there were 114 people in the courthouse and Annex combined. Data from February shows 120 available beds for both jails, but with a total population of 136. Data puts the jail above the courthouse at 146.9% capacity.
Historical data shows the jail population reaching nearly 200 people.
Cocke County Sheriff Armando Fontes says throwing people in jail does not cure addiction, and that investment in the jails is “much needed.” His administration saw the beginning of a Jail Chemical Addiction Program, the first of its kind in Tennessee, which began last summer and has graduated two classes on their way back into healthy society.
Because drug use is so prevalent in the jail, the TN JCAP unit is sequestered from the main jail above the courthouse, so that students there will not be tempted to use, and remain separated from the behaviors and attitudes of active addiction among the other inmates.
“It’s a central hub where all of your people with drug addiction – people that commit criminal acts – but a lot of that is because of drug addiction and it’s where all the community’s problems go to,” Fontes says of the jail. “It’s important that these jails become facilities that are focused and geared toward rehabilitation because, you know, there’s a lot of people that are still salvageable and unfortunately, we don’t have the resources in our jail to do a lot of things that I would love to have done, but we never could get the financial support.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, a military surgeon and renowned author, once wrote that a society is judged “not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals.”
On Wednesday, February 9, a jail guard throws Misty Rodriguez 12 feet across her cell, where she sustains head injuries, bruises and loses a tooth. Her accused attacker, 21-year-old Bryson Hance, is fired from his position at Cocke County Sheriff’s Office.
Thursday, October 28: Kelsey Wolfe is reported dead of drug overdose while staying in the jail, although her family disputes it publicly on Facebook, saying they want answers. In response to ridicule and dismissive jokes, her family asks others to consider that she is a person, grieved by friends, family and her children.
Monday, August 16: Todd Douglas uses jail-issue clothing to hang himself in his cell where he is housed alone.
The rate at which inmate deaths are documented in news sources suggests they are being under-reported in official data, which is sparse.
The Newport Plain Talk was granted access in February to the Cocke County Jail Annex and the jail over the courthouse. In addition to those printed here, 300 photographs are available in the online edition; however, images and words do not convey the whole story.
No cell is ventilated. At 100% humidity the combined smell of mold, chemicals, the Newport water supply, and the smell of too many bodies in one place permeate the jail, sticks to the hair and clothes, and is strongest at the Annex where flooding occurs and people are forced to sleep on the floor.
Open drains where the grating is broken or missing are coated in a gray slime, congealed around the inner openings. A mop bucket sits unevenly, missing a wheel. Inmates mop the area, pushing filth into the exposed drain, three feet away from a wet bedroll on the concrete floor, its edges damp from the mopping. Black mold grows in corners around the ceiling. A small tray slot in the door is left open, the only point of ventilation in a cell where more women sleep than there are beds. Their hair is greasy and wet looking. It is not their fault.
“It’s horrid,” says a jail Annex nurse. “Horrid.”
She says sometimes she tells the guards not to put people in the cells. Turning to Cecil Holt, administrative lieutenant over the jail, she asks if he has shown the black mold to The Newport Plain Talk. He did. Guards, nurses and other correctional officers breathe the same air as the inmates.
“I have to shut down some of the filth sometimes, and tell them not—like, ‘Look, you can’t put anybody in here because it will take your breath when you open the door,’” she says. “It’s not safe to have somebody in there breathing that stuff, and sometimes we don’t have a choice. We have to put them in there anyway.”
A woman inside complains that each time she blows her nose, blood comes out.
It is well known that there are holes in the jail exterior walls, and fences have been constructed around some sections of the Annex jail, near where the women are currently housed, to prevent people from drilling new holes for delivering drugs into the jail. Metal shields are seen covering the old holes. Still, the winter winds manage to break through.
Broken windows on the courthouse exterior are a fitting cover to the equally broken story within. Holes in the walls around the building, lax security, inmates routinely crossing the train tracks between the Annex and courthouse lawn, and staff shortages create the conditions for escape, corruption and drug proliferation throughout the jail system.
Police reports occasionally mention arrests involving people attempting to throw parcels of drugs into jail through the broken windows on the third story of the courthouse. In other cases, guards themselves were found bringing drugs into the jail.
The sole Black inhabitant on the day of shooting is found in the suicide watch cell. Because the unventilated room triples as a bathroom and shower, the entire floor is wet, the air is humid and smells strongly like the rest of the jail annex. She lies motionless under a stained, green blanket. Her empty food tray sits two feet away on the wet floor. On the wall someone has scratched a message: “I was put on suicide watch as punishment.” Another writer responds, “Sometimes it be like that.”
Placing the jail directly above the courthouse has been impractical, and led to some practical jokes. At least one cell in the courthouse jail was converted to a nurse’s station at a judge’s request after inmates in the cell above his chamber learned where they were, and began flooding the room, draining dirty water onto his desk.
On the day when Newport Plain Talk documented the interior, the jail above the courthouse was staffed by a single guard: a pregnant woman who has to request coverage, wait for help to secure their posts in the Annex, and arrive at the old jail before she can leave to go to the bathroom, which is located in another area.
Her post is a noisy room with a view of the Annex, containing two broken air conditioners where the security camera system hub is located. Exposed wires run to the camera system, which buzzes loudly. It never stops, she says.
The entire jail system is serviced by a single small kitchen, a family-size washer and dryer pair, and sometimes just two guards are responsible for upwards of 200 people.
Until the citizens of the county can agree upon a way to repay a $50 million loan, the horrors taking place at the Cocke County jail will continue unabated.
The matter sits in General Committee, awaiting further discussion.
Photos: James K. Galloway
Cocke County Jail Annex main hall.
A small, dirty kitchen serves upwards of 200 inmates.
Mold, rust and grease collect on the kitchen ceiling.
Exposed pipes in the wall, where cabinets are supposed to be.
Jail-issue clothing acts as a filter on this kitchen air duct.
Bathroom attached to the kitchen.
Attorney-client privilege.
Ceiling tiles throughout the Jail Annex are missing or waterlogged.
The entire building smells like chemicals, Newport water and too many bodies in a small area. Kitchen, left door. Control room, right.
The bedroll is wet at the edges, where women are mopping the cell.
Women talk to Administrative Lieutenant Cecil Holt as they wait for permission to reenter the cell.
They are forced to keep their cells clean using broken implements.
A food tray covers the floor drain.
Filthy standing water stagnates in the exposed floor drain at all times. The opening smells like grease, bleach and rotten garbage. Inmates cover the drain with a food tray. Two feet away, a woman sleeps on the floor.
A sleeping mat lies on the floor, next to the shared toilet.
A common sight in every cell, pages of a book are used to dim the fluorescent lights.
Suicide watch. Solitary.
Water from the shower spills into the entire suicide watch cell.
A woman lies motionless in bed. Parts of her blanket appears wet. Her empty food tray sits on a wet floor. On the wall, someone has scratched the message, “I was put on suicide watch as punishment.”
A concrete ridge does little to prevent water from splashing into the sleep area.
A room in the Annex where suicidal people are held in isolation.
The main women’s cell, bathroom and shower area. Mold creeps from every corner. Rust on the walls. Covers have been torn from sleeping mats for use as a shower curtain. One toilet is broken and covered. 20 women share a single toilet.
The main women’s cell, bathroom and shower area. Mold creeps from every corner. Rust on the walls. Covers have been torn from sleeping mats for use as a shower curtain. 20 women share a single toilet. The other is broken and covered.
The women’s cell.
Because of overcrowding, women are forced to sleep on the floor. Several have mental issues, a woman explained, and should not be around other inmates.
Mold above the shower.
Because of overcrowding, women sleep on the floor adjacent to the bath area. Historical data shows as many as 200 inmates have occupied a jail with 120 beds.
Mold in the shared shower.
A woman sleeps on the floor in a corner of shared cell. The large wall is an exterior wall where drugs once came through. Now, only cold air comes through, feeding the mold. Because of overcrowding, women sleep on the floor, even next to the bathroom area. Historical data shows as many as 200 inmates have occupied a jail with 120 beds.
Another angle of mold in the women’s shower.
The shared shower is a significant source of mold, which is everywhere. A woman complains that when she blows her nose, there is always blood.
A woman spreads out the shower curtain, revealing mildew and mold.
Mold or mildew is growing inside the covered toilet.
The mats used for sleeping are easily shredded.
A woman sleeps in the floor between two bunks. She sleeps on a mat made of white, easily shredded material resembling insulation.
The floor is wet from a leak in the roof.
Orange correctional uniforms are used for soaking up leaks.
The leak is coming from here.
A woman sleeps in another corner of the room.
A small tray slot in the door is left open, the only point of ventilation in a cell where more women sleep than there are beds. At 100% humidity mold thrives here. No cells in the jail annex are ventilated.
Men share a small cell in the Annex. Orange jail-issue shirts are used to cover the exposed floor drains, where stagnant water is pooled underneath.
Jail-issue clothing is used to catch leaks and cover drains in the floor.
Perhaps the most modern piece of equipment in the building, this machine tests inmate substance levels.
The nurse’s office. The room has been repainted, and a broken drawer is removed from the cabinet to create a cleaner looking environment.
A nurse pulls back the cover to reveal that the examination table is in poor condition. The vinyl surface can be easily cleaned; however, the exposed cushion is more likely to retain fluids, spreading disease.
A chair with straps is used for moving uncooperative inmates.
The “yard” allows inmates fresh air.
Serviced by a single drain, the yard is easily flooded. A wet line shows the edge of where the most recent flooding stopped.
A floor drain in the yard can not keep up with the rain, and floods the concrete area.
Yard access door. Inmates bang on the door when it gets too cold, begging to be let back in.
“Clean” sleeping mats, ready for reuse.
The control room.
A control room computer sits on a crate.
An American flag covers exposed wire running through the security control room.
Lobby and visitation area. To limit traffic in the courts, similar systems are also used to allow inmates to interface with the judge.
The exterior wall of the Jail Annex. Metal shields cover points in the wall where outsiders have drilled holes to pass drugs into the jail. A fence was constructed to keep people away from the wall.
Wide shot of the exterior wall of the Jail Annex. A fence was constructed to keep people away from the wall, where they were drilling holes and passing drugs into the jail.
Trash and debris around an entrance to the Annex office area.
The Annex can not be completely encircled by fence, as it would restrict access to the Annex office area.
Inmates are housed on the third floor of the Cocke County Courthouse, where most of the broken windows are located.
Cocke County Courthouse third floor. The JCAP unit is located behind these windows.
A barred door on the second floor of the courthouse leads upstairs, to the top floor, where inmates are housed in the courthouse jail, dating back to 1932. Since then, conditions have worsened.
Stairwell to the third floor.
The main door leading to the courthouse jail on the third floor.
Exposed wires in the jail above the Cocke County Courthouse.
A privileged cell, inmates on good behavior are allowed to watch cable TV. In all other ways, the conditions remain deplorable.
Another privileged cell. Because inmates are working to better themselves here, they are permitted access to musical instruments, utensils and outside food.
Mold is allowed to grow in every shower.
Drugs make their way into the jails through holes around the building.
A washing machine is broken, with standing water still inside. One or two home washing machine units service the entire Cocke County jail system. Because the doors of the courthouse jail are too small, commercial units will not fit inside the building. A film covers the stagnant water surface.
A single home-sized washing machine services the entire jail. In February, there were 136 inmates, pushing the facility over capacity by 16 people.
A dryer that would typically be found in a home is used to service the entire Cocke County jail system.
The hot water heater sits in a main hallway.
A door is ripped off the hinges.
Exposed wires feed into the camera system atop the courthouse jail control room. The hub machinery is very noisy. Louder than normal conversation, guards must endure the sound at all hours of the day.
The air conditioner is broken, the pregnant guard says.
A view of the Jail Annex from the courthouse control room.
A broken air conditioner is still connected to the window.
The nurse’s station “closet,” a decommissioned shower that was previously used by inmates to flood the judge’s chamber below.
Nurse’s station in the courthouse jail.
Inmates are gathered from the JCAP unit to assist, as Holt prepares to open a solitary confinement cell door. The person inside is openly hostile.
The room is entirely metal, with painted walls. Holt stands between the man and photographer.
“Love me for me” is scratched into the painted metal wall. JCAP students stand by.
A bathroom in the most privileged cell over the courthouse, shared by eight men who are trusted to work in and around the jail.
Mold is rampant in the overused worker shower.
A bathroom shared by at least eight men, in a privileged unit populated by those who are trusted to work in and around the jail.
Mold and rust spread throughout the worker cell. An inmate sleeps adjacent to a moldy shower.
A cell for privileged workers.
Another angle of the jail worker bathroom, shared by at least eight men.
Final look into the jail worker cell.
A view into what is considered a privileged unit, shared by at least eight men who belong to the jail work program.
Holt checks in on a small cell.
A ray of light cutting through the darkness of Cocke County jails, the JCAP unit is a privileged set of courses enabling inmates to overcome addiction and approach true rehabilitation. Bars have been cut out from the JCAP wing of the jail over Cocke County Courthouse to create a boardroom style setting.
Bars have been cut out from the JCAP wing of the jail over Cocke County Courthouse. The area now contains a conference room table, whiteboard and chairs. Art decorates the walls, as well as Bible quotes, inspirational messages, and the writings of men in the program.
The JCAP bathroom is not without its faults, but adherents to the program maintain it to the best of their ability.
The cleanliness of the JCAP setting in contrast to the dilapidated enclosure.
Iron bars, after they were cut from the JCAP work area.
The JCAP sleep cells are painted to specs defined by jail nurses as conducive to proper rest. In preparation for life on the outside, the JCAP cell and dormitory area is held to a higher standard of comfort and cleanliness.
The ceiling around a third-floor cable is disintegrating.
A short elevator ride back down opens into a familiar scene.
