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JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A hotel that was a gathering spot for Mississippi lawmakers and lobbyists may be saved if it can become a historic landmark.

Trustees for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History have put downtown Jackson’s Sun-N-Sand Motor Hotel on consideration for a state landmark designation.

WAPT-TV reports that a 30-day public comment period began Nov. 5. After that ends, trustees will decide on the designation.

The Sun-N-Sand opened in the 1960s near the state Capitol. It closed in 2001, and the buildings have been deteriorating.

On July 10, the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration announced its intent to tear down the building but keep its iconic midcentury sign.

MERIDIAN, Miss. (AP) — A man is accused of stealing an ambulance that had a napping crew member in it and leading authorities on a car chase that ended when he tried to flee on foot.

Lauderdale County sheriff’s Chief Deputy Ward Calhoun tells WTOK-TV that Zachary Hopson hopped into the ambulance at a truck stop in Lost Gap and drove off. He says the surprised crew member jumped from the vehicle before it reached a nearby interstate. The worker wasn’t injured.

Calhoun says the fleeing ambulance led deputies and Meridian police on a high-speed chase. He says a Meridian officer navigated his patrol car in front of the ambulance to slow it down, and the ambulance stopped. He says Hopson was caught trying to flee on foot into nearby woods.

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Information from: WTOK-TV, http://www.wtok.com

BILOXI, Miss. (AP) — A landmark restaurant on the Mississippi Gulf Coast was closed for several hours by agents from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Bobby Mahoney is owner of Mary Mahoney’s Old French House restaurant in Biloxi. News outlets report that he issued a statement Tuesday saying agents were investigating whether fish had been mislabeled.

The restaurant was closed during lunch Tuesday, but Mahoney said employees were preparing for the dinner shift.

Mary Mahoney’s opened in 1962 a short distance from the beach. Like many other buildings in downtown Biloxi, it underwent restoration after being heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi’s habitual offender laws are causing “extreme” prison sentences that are disproportionally affecting African American men and are costing the state millions of dollars for decades of incarceration, according to a new report by a nonprofit advocacy group founded by technology and business executives.

The report released Tuesday by FWD.us — a group also known as Forward — says long prison sentences do not improve public safety.

“Deterrence, in the case of long sentences, is the idea that people will not commit crimes because they are scared of going to prison for a long time,” the report says. “But research shows that severe punishments do not increase public safety and don’t deter criminal behavior in the first place.”

Mississippi has the third-highest imprisonment rate among U.S. states, after Louisiana and Oklahoma, according to the Justice Department.

The FWD.us report is based on information from the Mississippi Department of Corrections. It says that in June, Mississippi had 2,635 inmates sentenced as habitual offenders. It says 906 of them were sentenced at least 20 years in prison, and nearly half of those — 439 — were sentenced to at least 50 years.

Under habitual offender laws, a person with previous convictions can face extra years in prison for conviction of an additional crime. The FWD.us report says enhanced penalties “can be used at the complete discretion of the prosecutor and can be applied to any offense, including minor crimes such as shoplifting or drug possession.”

The report says African American men make up 13% of Mississippi’s population but are 75% of those receiving sentences of at least 20 years.

“The list of crimes defined as ‘violent’ in Mississippi law is lengthy and includes some offenses that do not involve the use of force against a person, such as breaking into a garage,” the report says. “For example, a person could be sentenced to life in prison for marijuana possession if they had one prior conviction for stealing from a garage and one prior conviction for drug possession.”

The report is being released weeks ahead of a new Mississippi legislative session that begins in early January. The senior criminal justice reform director for FWD.us, Zoe Towns, told The Associated Press that the report is intended to spur discussion among lawmakers.

“It’s time to be a little bit more outraged by these kinds of stories,” Towns said. “It’s not normal to be sentencing people to 10 and 20 and 30 and 60 and 200 years — probably for anything, but certainly not for some of these offenses, which are not necessarily a public safety threat to anybody.”

FWD.us was formed in 2013 by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other technology and business executives. The group says on its website that it focuses on “fixing the failed immigration and criminal justice systems that have locked too many out of the American dream for too long.”

Towns said FWD.us has worked with Republican leaders in Oklahoma on the recent commutation of sentences for more than 400 inmates — the largest single-day mass commutation in U.S. history. She said the organization has also worked with the Democratic governor of New York on changes to bail.

The report says the 78 Mississippi inmates serving sentences of at least 50 years for drug crimes were sentenced to a collective 4,668 years and they have already been imprisoned 1,108 years. At a cost of roughly $14,500 per year to house a person in prison in Mississippi, “state taxpayers have already spent over $16 million housing this group of just 78 people and their sentences would cost nearly $70 million if served in their entirety,” the report says.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed a law in 2014 that was designed to make the state’s criminal justice system more efficient and less expensive. For the first time, it specified which crimes are classified as violent, for sentencing purposes. It gave judges more flexibility to impose alternate sentences, such as ordering treatment for drug users.