Local law enforcement officials have no supervisory responsibilities for inmates who are transferred by the Mississippi Department of Corrections from prison cells to house arrest, but they still deserve to be notified before the transfers take place.

Should an incident result from a convict’s being returned, it’s the sheriff’s office or the police department, or both, that will end up investigating — and paying.

It ought to go without saying that police and deputies need to know about certain criminal offenders in their jurisdiction. Convicted sex offenders, for example, are required to register their addresses.

Law enforcement officials also need to know about prisoners who are still serving their sentences — not in prison but in private homes — in their jurisdictions.

MDOC officials are not releasing that information to law enforcement authorities, who have spent time and money building legal cases against suspects to obtain convictions and prison time only to find out by chance that the convicts are not behind bars.

“The person saw him at the Waffle House,” Lt. Bobby Stewart said last week about a phone call from a resident who had seen former Vicksburg Housing Authority maintenance supervisor Charles Jones, whom Stewart believed to be in prison. Jones had been sentenced just one year before to 10 years.

Sheriff Martin Pace also was not told Jones was back in the county. In the past, Pace has just happened to see on city and county streets and roads other felons his department worked to put behind bars.

Whether house-arrest inmates are allowed to go to the Waffle House or drive county roads is a matter for the MDOC supervisor to decide in each case. Local officials potentially have different concerns.

Jones, who bargained a guilty plea to possessing more than 2 pounds of cocaine with a street value of $100,000 in exchange for dropping drug distribution and embezzlement charges, was nabbed after a five-year police investigation at the federally funded Vicksburg Housing Authority, which provides more than 400 homes in six subdivisions for families including children.

Others on the MDOC’s house-arrest list were sentenced to prison after admitting possession of chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine, an explosive process that can and has resulted in property damage, injuries and even death.

Presumably, MDOC wants to save money by transferring prisoners, held at a cost of $40 a day, to house arrest, which costs about $12.

But just in case they are also transferring law-enforcement problems, cooperation, communication and transparency with local law enforcement have to be part of the process.