Jackson Free Press

After the Jackson Free Press followed up on a tip regarding water damage to decades-old documents in the Hinds County Courthouse, Hinds County Circuit Clerk Barbara Dunn told us that no documents were at risk of water damage and there had been no flooding. After a visit to the file-storage area in the courthouse, though, it is clear that files housed there are not treated with care or as if they are important to the city.

Within the maze of dirty rooms and wading among trash and other odd objects, court documents and criminal files rot away on the fourth floor of the downtown Jackson public building.

"It's been picked through or whatever you want to call it and just put up there because we don't have room down here to keep it," Dunn said of the files stored upstairs.

A puddle seeping out beneath one bookshelf is clearly not the only presence of water. Boxes on top of boxes with water-damage marks signal the risk of seriously detrimental destruction of files.

In one room, two buckets and a trashcan filled with water catch droplets from the leaking pipes above. "We have buckets down here under the stairwell that have to be emptied every now and then, and that's been from day one," Dunn said.

While many of the documents contained in the county courthouse are electronically backed up, not all are, and the building's current condition is sure to contribute to the destruction of Hinds County history. "I don't have any earthly idea," Dunn said when asked how much of the courthouse's documents are backed up electronically. "Some is, some isn't."

See a gallery of these and other courthouse pictures at jfp.ms/countyfiles.