Major gaps exist in quality of jails
Ensuring safety at the nation’s 3,200 jails falls to a patchwork of local and state authorities who have made sweeping improvements at some jails while other lockups, in the words of one expert, “can’t even measure up to … ASPCA regulations.” Wide gaps in the quality of jails still exist – in training, medical care and fire safety among other areas. Concerns about jail safety were highlighted last weekend when eight inmates in North Carolina died in their cells during a fire.
“In some counties, it’s fine,” said Alan Henry, director of the Pretrial Services Resource Center in Washington. “In other counties, you need to be aware that you’re in danger the whole time you’re there.”
Unlike state-run prisons, jails are almost all the responsibility of local governments, usually counties. They can range from huge facilities like the Chicago-area county jail, that houses nearly 10,000, to the 20-person jail that burned in Mitchell County, N.C.
Overall, nearly a third of the nation’s incarcerated are in jails – 630,000 people – with another 1.3 million inmates in state and federal prisons as of last June, the Justice Department reported.
Nationwide standards for jails exist, but they’re voluntary, put forth by the American Correctional Association. Only 150 or so, less than 5 percent of jails, are accredited by the ACA. Others may meet standards but don’t seek accreditation.
Many states have their own jail standards and inspections programs, though they vary greatly in terms of criteria and enforcement power. Ten states have no statewide inspection system, the American Jail Association said.
Still, jail administrators and watchdogs like Henry agree that the nation’s lockups have made significant improvements in the past 30 years.
“We really have improved as a profession,” said Tom Rosazza, a former prison warden in Maryland and now a prison and jail consultant. Thirty years ago, there were no standards, no training and no policies, he said.
Jails today act as the front door of the criminal justice system, and those coming through need medical evaluations, psychological assessments and even suicide watches. Overcrowding, supervision and medical care are all problematic.
Possibly the most serious problem, overcrowding, has eased in the past decade, with jails’ capacity down to 90 percent nationally last year, from a high of 104 percent full in 1990, the Justice Department reported.
“I liken it to the history of flight,” Rosazza said. “In my short lifetime in corrections, that’s what we’ve done. We didn’t even go to the moon; we got to Mars.”
Consider the 1,328-bed jail in Monmouth County, N.J. There are smoke alarms, sprinklers, fire exits, classes in life skills and anger management; inmates can study and receive a high school diploma.
Sheriff Joe Oxley describes a modern institution that’s a cross between a hotel and a school, except for one thing: “If you check in with us, the only thing is you can’t leave.”
His jail, which cost upward of $42 million to build in the early 1990s, meets ACA standards, state standards, medical standards and more.
But in some states, standards are weak and some inspections carry no real enforcement power, said several experts who monitor and work with jails. Different jails in the same state may require different approaches.
In North Carolina – where investigators suspect an electric heater started the fatal fire – the jail had passed its last inspection in November (officials were told to make a duplicate set of keys, which they did). The facility had smoke detectors but not sprinklers, and smoke and flames kept jailers from unlocking all the cells.
Swamped with questions after the blaze, many administrators and observers said the focus should be on addressing each jail’s needs, rather than setting one standard for all jails to meet. Jails are “too often the bottom of the criminal justice totem pole, and even more at the bottom of the county’s budgetary totem pole,” said Stephen Ingley, executive director of the American Jail Association.
“It’s not so much the jail people that are deficient,” said Robert Verdeyen, the ACA’s accreditation director. “It’s the county commissioners, the boards of supervisors, the funding people that are unwilling to provide the money.”
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On the Net:
American Jail Association: http://www.corrections.com/aja/