"Deplorable and inadequately staffed." So states the first paragraph of a Hinds County grand jury report on the county detention center issued last week. The report is posted below. The nineteen-page report makes several recommendations and observations.Hinds County Circuit Judge Tomie Green convened the grand jury after a disturbance at the jail several weeks ago and ordered it to investigate the jail and its operations.
The report states "it is our opinion that the HCDC is in a deplorable condition and inadequately staffed. In its present state, the HCDC poses major security risks to inmates, staff" and others. The grand jury hired Dr. James Austin as a consultant for the report. Dr. Austin inspected the jail and made several recommendations, which were adopted by the grand jury. The grand jury a
stated:
*The jail is designed to hold 594 inmates but actually should never hold over 90% of the capacity (535 inmates). The approved bed capacity after the closure of Pod C last year is 415 inmates. However, the report states the actual population should not be more than 90% of capacity- 374 inmates. C-pod should be operational in October. However, the grand jury states the jail should not be fully occupied until pods A & B are completely renovated.
*There are nearly 400 bookings per month and 5,000 per year. The report states the average length of stay is thirty days and is high compared to similar jails.
*Hinds County sends inmates to other jails in Madison, Rankin, Simpson, and Yazoo Counties as well as Jackson since the destruction of pod-C. The appropriate governments billed Hinds County $635,714.
*The county provides funding to support "260 security staff." While the overall number of staff was adequate, the report states the number of employees assigned to each shift was uneven and thus left some shifts understaffed. The report also states "all of the facility's control centers are inadequately staffed, which poses major security and liability risks for the facility."
*Only one officer staffed the main control center during the inspection. The main entry point at the facility was also only staffed by one officer. The booking area only had one officer during the afternoon/evening shift. The grand jury recommending assigning an additional officer to the booking area.
*No control boards can be used to close the cell doors. Too many female officers directly supervise the inmates inside the housing units. "There are no rovers to assist staff in the housing units. The report recommends using two rovers to each pod for all three shifts.
*The report blamed the staffing problems on the "high turnover rate". There were 200 staff terminations in 2012. 80 terminations in the first six months of 2013 and projected terminations for 2013 are 160. The starting salary is $21,816. Such low pay makes recruiting the best qualified employees extremely difficult. The staff has little training and over half of those in direct contact with "inmates are females."
*The county has not completed several hundred work orders. However, the county claims the inmates quickly "damage all repairs" once they are made. Over 90 cells have no lighting. A Department of Health Inspector had to cut short his inspection of a pod after the staff advised him it was unsafe to continue.
*The county has spent $1.032 million on emergency repairs in the last year. The county is retrofitting all door frames so inmates can not easily breach them as they have in the past.
*"The only functioning cameras are in the "Grand Hallway" (You should see it. Valhalla comes to mind" and in certain outside and limited housing areas." However, the county obtained funding to install new cameras throughout the detention center.
*Nearly all inmates are on "lock-down status". The report stresses there are no positive incentives for inmates to conform to rules. There is no separate units for inmates who violate the rules repeatedly or commit the most serious offenses. There is no classification system of inmates based on risk. The report recommends reclassifying inmates every sixty days.
*Average time in custody is 190 days. More than 125 inmates have been in custody for over a year.
*Sheriff should immediately assign 20 deputies to the detention center to fill the vacancies stated above. The Grand Jury also charges the Sheriff to hire an experienced jail administrator to supervise all three county correctional facilities.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Grand jury issues report on jail.
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18 comments:
Who built the Jail? Is it old? or just poorly built?
The facility was doomed from the beginning. I'm referring to the architect controversy. The details evade me, but I don't recall due corrections on that matter. The problems have been kicked down the road since. The laughable BOS and sheriff certainly don't have the experience or knowledge to handle this can of worms. The wages mentioned are ridiculous, to expect to hire competent employees. Are they all receiving government handouts, such as food stamps to survive?? A qualified head hunter should be employed to find a competent administrator.
One of the first minority required contracts.It was a mess from day one. Everything was done wrong.
I don't understand all this talk about the building of the jail. Mac ran this jail for almost 20 years without riots and jailbreaks. same or lower salaries that are being paid now. Could it be that the incompetent idiot that is now the sheriff is to blame?! No, can't be that!!
We can thank the Hinds County Supervisor Bennie Thompson in large part for the problems with construction of the jail. He was the one that insisted on it being located in such a remote location and that a large part of the design was awarded to unqualified and inexperienced minority business (all of whom went out of business fairly soon after the jail was built). Drawings/blueprints were so poor that the contractor couldn't read them and specifications called for inadequate equipment such as the cell door locks that have always been a problem. There were some contractor (Dunn Construction, Inc.) issues, but they paid a fairly large settlement a few years ago
I was an insider during the transition. The first thing Tyrone did was cut the number of guards at the prison. Mac was appalled. Do we miss him yet?
Funny thing is all of the Black Crows cackling and clucking thing everything is just fine! Come on people, you can't fix fatuous
Can't fix flatulence either. This whole thing has smelled of sulphur for years!
Jackson and Hinds County are LOST!
Maybe we should take the management from the Zoo and put them in charge of the jail and take the jail management and put them in charge of the Zoo. Nah... the animals at the zoo deserve better than that.
You can get ready for tax increases next year. More democrat methodology. Snooker and BooBoo will feed every dollar they can to the city of Jackson, but the city, where most of the inmates are from, will deny any responsibility for the jail. The sheriff of course is providing law enforcement to Jackson, and on interstates (State responsibility).There are solutions to these problems of course, but the sheriff and BOS play politics, instead of taking responsibility.
The JPD are always on I-55 with their radar guns, generating revenue for Jackson.
I didn't realize the interstates were the state's responsibility.
If you think about it, it could be a lot more of a burden on the county if the city DA and judges actually sent crooks to jail instead of letting them go.
If your home was burglarized, you were robbed, one of your children was injured, your wife was raped, or your parents were murdered, you wouldn't want them on the streets. That would be thinking like BooBoo.
I met with a client in the Hinds County jail a couple of months ago, which means I passed through the first checkpoint, through the "Grand Hall" (Valhalla, indeed) thence into the bowels of the jail.
I simply could not believe how primitive the security systems were. The control room, staffed by one deputy, only had two chintzy cameras, supposedly covering 100+ cells. Walkie-talkies didn't work, so the deputy in the control center communicated with the deputy inside the holding area by blinking the lights on and off. The inmates could be observed inside the holding areas (through big windows) coming and going from their cells with zero restraint. The whole thing made my hair stand on end.
I've met with clients in other jails across the state, and I've never seen another jail so poorly designed and operated as Hinds County.
"Valhalla " ...thats funny !
You cannot fire all of your experienced staff when you first take over and hope to have a staff that knows how to run a jail. Then you let 1.5 million dollars go back to the Board of Supervisors at the end of your budget year. The sheriff cannot complain about his staff and their pay. He hired them and then mismanaged their pay.
Tyrone Lewis and his chiefs have no idea how to run a jail. None of them have any experience in jail administration.
Bring McMillin back! He put together a group of trained professionals who knew how to run a jail. Tyrone Lewis failed at the Jackson Police Department and is continuing his bad habits as sheriff.
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