The Bay County sheriff's office will have a new duty next Thursday. That's when they'll take over the operations of the jail from Corrections Corporation of America. Sheriff Frank McKeithen says his team is ready, but they still have some work to do.

The sheriff's office has had a little over four months to prepare to run the jail, when CCA leaves on October 9th and it's been a challenging process.

Frank McKeithen, the Bay Co. Sheriff, says, “Certainly it's a lot more complicated than saying we're going to take over the jail on October 9th. There's quite a transition that we've been going through not only with assisting CCA with the actual transition of the bodies of the inmates but the transition of things such as property, employees, things of this nature."

One key area there having to make big changes is with the computer system.

"Technology is one of the things we've really been struggling with trying to make sure that the second we take over we can't miss a lick, so there's been a lot of planning there and a lot of strategy that we've used.”

Out of 250 employees working for CCA currently, 190 have been hired to work for the sheriff's office.

“We're pretty much at full staff with our personnel, we've almost finished that. Medical staff we'll have our own doctor out there too."

Even though the sheriff's office is ready for the transition they still have to cross some t's, and dot some i's, before the jail is in full swing."

"I already talked with the court systems and forewarning the public and inmates that the first three or four days of the transition, we will probably eliminate visitation and some things like this until we're strategically ready to assume all the things that we do there."

Sheriff McKeithen is confident that his office is ready to go.

The sheriff's office is scheduled to officially take over one week from today, on October 9th sometime in the afternoon; the exact time isn't being released for security purposes.