To make room for more inmates, the Norfolk County, Ma., jail’s gymnasium has been transformed into a dormitory and is filled with rows of skinny triple-bunk beds. Inmates have also had to sleep on the floor in temporary plastic beds known as “canoes,” reports the Boston Globe. Every prison and jail in Southeastern Massachusetts is operating over its capacity, and overcrowding is an issue facing every correctional institution in the state. Correction officials are bracing for an even bigger shortage of beds in the coming years as more prisoners arrive and more stay behind bars longer, due to tougher mandatory minimum-sentencing laws. The state Department of Correction projects the incarcerated population will grow from about 11,892 in 2011 to 14,753 by 2019.
In Bridgewater, the Old Colony Correctional Center was built to house 480 medium-security inmates but houses 809. At the Bristol County Jail and House of Correction in Dartmouth, every cell is double-bunked, and beds have taken over the gymnasium there, too, as the occupancy rate has skyrocketed to 384 percent. “It’s getting steadily worse,” said Leslie Walker of Prisoners’ Legal Services, a Boston-based advocacy group. “I don’t recall the numbers ever being this high.”
Read full entry »Houston's Harris County Sheriff's Office continues to fire deputies and other employees for having sex with jailed inmates, using illegal drugs, employing excessive force or using their position to steal from the public, reports the Houston Chronicle. In the first three months of this year, Sheriff Adrian Garcia fired nine deputies, detention officers, and clerks after they committed criminal acts or violated department regulations.
Garcia also reprimanded 30 employees and suspended another 31. Their offenses included causing 34 wrecks, associating with convicted felons, sleeping on the job, leaving the doors to a jail facility open, and one case where an armed deputy got into a drunken bar fight. Since taking office in 2009, Garcia has increased the number of disciplinary actions compared to his predecessor. He has fired about 95 employees and handed down around 830 reprimands and suspensions without pay to others in the department. "We have up to 2,000 employees working in the jail system, and I am proud of the fact that nearly all do their jobs without complaint and without complaints against them," Garcia said.
Read full entry »Asserting that violence has increased at New Orleans' Orleans Parish jail in recent days, the Southern Poverty Law Center last night sought an injunction against the sheriff's office requesting a federal judge's immediate intervention, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The request came a month after the group filed a proposed class-action suit against Sheriff Marlin Gusman, saying that conditions at the jail are unsafe and unconstitutional.
The U.S. Justice Department later issued findings of inadequate staffing levels in jail facilities, pervasive violence and substandard mental health care. Gusman called the findings "sensationalized." The sheriff defended his stewardship of the jail, noting that he'd recently announced the closure of the House of Detention,one of the most criticized buildings he'd used to house inmates. One of the original plaintiffs, inmate Kent Anderson, said deputies have threatened him since the lawsuit, saying they could move him back to a jail facility where he believes isn't safe. "Since my lawyers filed the lawsuit, things have been hell for me. Deputies tell me, 'You want to complain about things? You want to tell your lawyers? We'll send you back to Old Parish Prison'
Read full entry »An analysis of new data on jail populations in the U.S. shows that the number of people confined in local jails is declining more rapidly than in state and federal prisons. The Sentencing Project finds that from 2007-2010 the incarceration rate in jails declined by more than three times the rate of prisons, 6.6 percent compared to 1.8 percent. The prison and jail population declines "has produced no adverse effects on public safety,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project. “We now have the opportunity to free up resources for public safety initiatives that do not depend on record rates of incarceration.”
The analysis by the Sentencing Project, a non-profit organization engaged in research and advocacy on criminal justice policy, is based on data released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in its annual report of individuals in jail. The report shows a decline in the number of inmates for the third consecutive year. Jails are local facilities that generally house persons awaiting trial or serving short sentences, while prisons are run by state and federal governments to confine persons sentenced to one year or more of incarceration. The BJS report also documents a sharp 23.4 percent reduction in the number of juveniles housed in adult jails between 2008-2011. The practice of housing juveniles with adults has come under broad criticism.
Read full entry »Kansas officials are rethinking a decision to house prison inmates in a county jail and have moved all of them back to a state facility after four escaped, including a convicted murderer, reports the Associated Press. The remaining 18 prison inmates who were held in the Ottawa County Jail have been returned to the state prison in Ellsworth. Overcrowding at Ellsworth had led the department to transfer inmates in January to the county jail.
The escape Wednesday morning from the jail in Minneapolis, a small town about 120 miles west of Topeka, also spurred debate among state legislators about prison overcrowding and keeping inmates in county lockups. Two inmates remained at large: Santos Carrera-Morales and Eric James, both 22. Carrera-Morales was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for a double-slaying in 2007, while James was serving time for 2008 convictions of aggravated robbery, burglary, kidnapping and criminal damage. A state prisons spokesman said the department was "reassessing our jail placement in Ottawa County right now."
Read full entry »The Columbus Dispatch reports that anger-management classes among jail inmates in Delaware County, Ohio, may be having an impact. The classes started in early March with just a few inmates, but enough that the number of fights, assaults on staff members and uses of force has dropped. Officials hope the lessons carry over when inmates are released.
“Maybe if we can teach them some skills while they’re in jail, we can have a better outcome,” said jail director Joseph Lynch. Only five inmates are admitted to the class, and it’s not group therapy. Clinical counselor Doug Arnold, who counsels and assesses inmates, uses an education-based approach. He has small goals, for each attendee to take part in the class discussions. Last week, they all did. “My intent is that they are interested in talking,” Arnold said. “Sometimes if it’s too large, they don’t want to talk.”
Read full entry »Facing an FBI investigation into brutality in his jails, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has committed to shuttering much of his most problematic lockup, Men's Central Jail, barring some unexpected hike in violent crime, reports the Los Angeles Times. In the past, Baca has tied the idea of shutting down the troubled downtown Los Angeles facility to the county's agreeing to pay for an expensive new jail.
The Times has reported that Baca was open to shutting down the old section of Men's Central Jail — the epicenter of violent clashes between deputies and inmates — even without that new jail. Baca rejected the idea that he was making the shift because of the intensified scrutiny in recent months of abuse inside his jails. "Bear with me if it sounds like I'm changing my tune [ ] investigations and allegations are not bases for rational management decisions," Baca said. "We're not talking here about all of a sudden we've been put in a corner." Baca said his new outlook was spurred by an American Civil Liberties Union report that found Los Angeles County's jail population could be reduced by, among other measures, increasing the number of inmates who are released back to the public and monitored electronically.
A sweeping plan to make local officials responsible for supervising thousands of released California prisoners formerly monitored by the state has gotten off to a bumpy start in Los Angeles County, reports the Los Angeles Times. Many ex-criminals are not showing up for counseling appointments, some care centers are not being paid, and county bureaucrats are scrambling to correct foul-ups that have caused delays.
About 6,000 prisoners were shifted to county supervision under a realignment law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The intent was to cut state costs and reduce severe prison overcrowding by keeping nonviolent felons in local jails instead of transferring them to the state system. The supervision of probationers was also shifted to counties. Los Angeles County supervisors have been critical of realignment, saying the state was trying to pass costs to local government and fearing that a rise in crime would occur once prisoners are released. Over six months, about a quarter of the probationers have been arrested for allegedly committing new crimes, which is below the previous state average for probationers. But some politicians and community activists worry that the numbers could climb further, especially since about 10 percent of released convicts are not attending meetings or have gone missing.
Yesterday's Supreme Court decision allowing strip searches of jail inmates suspected of minor offenses endorsed a procedure banned in at least 10 states and at odds with the policies of federal authorities, says the New York Times. The American Bar Association says that international human rights treaties also ban the procedures.
Federal appeals courts had been split on the question, though most of them prohibited strip-searches unless they were based on a reasonable suspicion that contraband was present. The Supreme Court did not say that strip-searches of every new arrestee were required; it ruled, rather, that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches did not forbid them. Daron Hall, the president of the American Correctional Association and sheriff of Davidson County, Tn., said the association welcomed the flexibility offered by the decision. The association’s standards discourage blanket strip-search policies.
Read full entry »Jails may conduct strip searches of people arrested on minor offenses, the Supreme Court ruled today, 5 to 4. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony...
Read full entry »Jones County, Tx., has an empty $35 million lockup to house 1,100 state convicts who never arrived, says the Austin American-Statesman. Such situations are...
Read full entry »Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam is seeking mandatory minimum jail sentences for repeat domestic violence offenders. Experts worry that mandatory jail time without treatment isn’t enough, reports The Tennessean. “In many other states, batterers programs are mandated for varying lengths at least for the first offense,” said Ed Gondolf, retired research director for the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Research and Training Institute and sociology professor emeritus at Indiana University of Pennsylvania “Putting people in jail, in and of itself, is not a cure-all. It sounds like it’s a simplistic answer to a harder problem and one that appeals to the public — the law and order toughness — but isn’t necessarily practical in the long run.”
State officials counter that it is an important step toward making repeat offenders accountable for actions that sometimes don’t earn any significant punishment. “This bill focuses on repeat offenders who have not changed their behavior despite previous interventions, including arrest, counseling, probation and court injunctions,” said Bill Gibbons, head of the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security. “Battering is a crime. We believe the best way to deter future violence is to increase perpetrator accountability.” One victim, Ashlee McGrann said that, based on her experiences, the state should require both.
Read full entry »A South Carolina jail released a convicted murderer by mistake, reports the Rock Hill, S.C., Herald. "We made a mistake and it was a human error that we regret - we regret more than anybody would ever know," said York County Sheriff Bruce Bryant. Thomas Whitlock, 31, was released Monday and had not been found as of last night. He was serving a 14-year prison term in North Carolina for the shooting death of a Charlotte man.
Whitlock had been in the York County jail since Feb. 8, awaiting a hearing on a pending drug possession charge. He was mistakenly released, Bryant said, because his file lacked information indicating that he was due back in North Carolina to finish serving his sentence for murder. On Monday, Whitlock pleaded guilty in exchange for a sentence that matched the 19 days he had already served in the jail. After that hearing, he was taken to the jail with paperwork indicating his case had ended. "We will hold accountable those who made the mistake," Bryant said.
A defenseless inmate was beaten by the Tioga County, N.Y., Jail's top administrator, David Monell, after being pepper-sprayed and handcuffed to a wooden bench by other officers. A district attorney decided not to prosecute after Monell resigned, reports the Binghamton (NY) Press and Sun-Bulletin, although the beating was captured on videotape.
The very next day, Monell was honored by the New York State Senate as the "2010 Correction Officer of the Year." The legislators had no idea what had happened only hours before. "Oftentimes, they figure the problem is solved by the staff person no longer working there," said University of Texas professor Michele Deitch, an expert on oversight of jails and prisons. "But unfortunately, that sends a really bad message to other staff: that this won't be taken seriously if you're caught." While county authorities never brought the incident to public attention, taxpayers are in line to pay the price of the beating: A settlement for an undisclosed sum is pending in a federal lawsuit against the county, the Sheriff's Office, and Monell.
Read full entry »Dallas County soon will begin charging certain jail inmates for their basic medical expenses, a practice common in some other states and a few Texas counties, says the Dallas Morning News. Sheriff Lupe Valdez said that within six months she will charge inmates a medical co-payment by tapping money in their commissary accounts, which they use to buy such items as toiletries and snacks. Inmates and their families put money in the accounts.
Those without commissary money will not be charged for medical services, and emergency and chronic care will still be covered by taxpayers. “The families are putting money there and inmates can use it for gummy bears or to take care of their health,” said County Commissioner John Wiley Price. Dallas County spent $32.3 million last year on jail medical services. About 65 to 70 percent of the total inmate population receives some medical care. The idea is not to generate revenue for the county but to cut recurring costs of transporting inmates to receive care.
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