Mark A. Maples, Esquire

*1 Attorney General Jim Hood has received your request and has assigned it to me for research and reply. Your letter concerns the placement of an individual's name on the sheriff's jail docket if that individual is housed in the jail as a resultof a mental or drug and alcohol commitment proceeding. Your concerns center around the privacy of the individual's identity. You request an opinion as to how to protect the individual's privacy. You discuss as an option to entering his name on the “Jail Docket Book” the maintenance of a “Mental Commitment Jail Docket Book” that would not be a public record. You also discuss a procedure whereby a mental commitment be identified on paperwork issued by the Chancery Clerk, by case number only, so that the “Jail Docket Book” would then contain the patient's Chancery Clerk's generated cause number, rather the name.

*1 Section 19-25-63 of the Mississippi Code refers to the duty of a sheriff maintaining a “Jail Docket” and entering the name of the “prisoner”, the date of the “arrest and commitment”, and “for what crime or other cause the party is imprisoned”in that docket book. “The record shall be kept as a public record…”

*1 Section 47-1-21 of the Mississippi Code also provides that the sheriff keep a “jail docket” entering information on each “convict” It also must contain information relating to the convict's commitment.

*1 It is the opinion of this office that the public “Jail Docket” is for the purpose of maintaining a record of individuals housed on criminal charges. Therefore, an individual housed as a result of a civil commitment as a result of a mental or drug or alcohol proceeding is not required to have his identity entered in the ‘Jail Docket”. It is the opinion of this office that the sheriff may maintain a separate “Mental Commitment ” docket.