February 23, 2023
By: Dwayne Page
A change is coming at the DeKalb County Jail.
Within the next few days or weeks, the Tennessee Corrections Institute is expected to instruct Sheriff Patrick Ray to stop using the basement of the older jail building for housing inmates because the facility doesn’t meet TCI standards due to existing physical plant deficiencies although the problems are not new. That means the 20 plus inmates there will have to be housed somewhere else.
During a meeting Wednesday night with the Sheriff, County Mayor Matt Adcock, and members of the County Commission, TCI Deputy Director Bob Bass said while the entire jail operation can maintain state certification as long as the county continues to make measurable progress under a master plan of action toward resolving the issues the basement portion of the 64-year-old facility will have to close. Members of the county commission also toured the jail during the meeting.
County Mayor Adcock unveiled his own master plan proposal for the county commission to consider during Wednesday night’s jail committee meeting which provides a detailed three-year timeline for the planning and eventual construction of either a criminal justice center or a new jail. The commission has not yet had any discussions on a future course of action regarding a building plan.
Bass told WJLE after the meeting that closing the basement area of the older jail facility is a measure the county will have to take.
“The primary thing the county is facing right now is housing inmates in that basement and those are not certifiable beds so TCI will come in and re-measure the jail and those bed spaces (in basement) will be removed from their count (overall capacity of 102 beds including 78 males and 24 females) so that will immediately put them over (capacity) and they will be over populated because they are going to lose about 22 beds,” said Bass.
In addition to not meeting the state’s per prisoner square footage clear floor space requirement, Bass said the jail basement has no natural light.” You must have skylight. Windows that produce natural light. You must have an 8-foot ceiling height. Your basement ceiling is 7 feet, 6 inches and you have a cage down there which serves as a makeshift cell for trustees with a 12-inch gap on top of it. That is unauthorized housing and while the cells have porcelain sinks and toilets the state requires, they be stainless steel. The cells also have no floor drains and conduit is exposed.” Bass continued.
County Mayor Adcock told WJLE his personal thoughts are that a criminal justice center would better meet the county’s needs than just a new jail.
“I created this criminal justice center plan. It’s just something to go by to give us some goals that would be helpful whether we went with a jail or criminal justice center. Mr. Bass said we needed to develop a master plan to get started and we are only in the preliminary stages of it so we’re introducing it to the commission. We will have more jail committee meetings and talk to public officials including the sheriff, judges, clerks, warrant commissioners and others to get their feedback and see whether they would recommend a criminal justice center or a jail and that will give us a better insight on the needs they have going forward,” said County Mayor Adcock.
“Our courthouse has a lot of security issues in walking prisoners across the road from the jail to the courthouse and trying to staff enough court officers especially when we have all three courtrooms full. I just think it’s a lot safer for the general public to go with a criminal justice center. I see a lot of benefit after talking to a lot of our public officials and attorneys,” said Adcock.
If the county should choose to build a criminal justice center, it has to be located within the city limits of Smithville. Bass said the county would probably need as much as ten acres to adequately accommodate such a complex.
County Mayor Adcock said he has also given some thought to that issue. “I have been scoping out large properties within the city limits. I don’t yet have any prices from anybody. It’s still too preliminary,” he said.
Sheriff Patrick Ray told WJLE that while he understands why the basement area of the jail will have to be closed it will create more headaches for him and his operation.
“We actually have three basement cells. Two of the cells hold 10 inmates each and one of them is for the sex offenders. Another cell there is where we keep our jail trustees. The trustees and the sex offenders cannot be housed with the general inmate population and that will cause us some problems when we have to close the basement. Knowing this was coming we have been brainstorming to see how we could move the inmates around in the jail or elsewhere to other jails. As of today (Wednesday night) we have 18 women in our female cells so we might be able to move all the women out of this jail and have only male inmates here or we might have to get other jails to hold our sex offenders but this will be a challenge for us to get them housed off premises because in many cases they (other jails) just don’t have the room for them especially women prisoners,” said Sheriff Ray.
“We do have a few inmates that are in the Robertson County Jail that are high risk inmates, but we have to pay them to house our inmates and its $55 a day per inmate so this could run into some money if we have to house 15-20 inmates somewhere else,” he continued.
Although the Smithville Police Department has a new facility, Sheriff Ray said it is not a certified jail and would not be an option for the DeKalb County Jail in holding inmates even if the city wanted to cooperate.
“When the city built the new police department, they included three holding cells to be used and when a city police officer makes an arrest, they put the prisoners in those cells and then after the officers obtain their warrants and paperwork, they transfer them here at our jail to be housed. The Smithville Police Department is not certified to house inmates there. Prisoners have to be housed in a TCI certified jail,” he said.
Sheriff Ray said while he is personally opposed to building a new jail or criminal justice center, he is aware of the realities facing the county.
“TCI is our governing agency that comes in and gives us guidance on standards for the jail to maintain and if the jail should become decertified then the county opens itself up to lawsuits for violations of TCI standards. Someone could bring a lawsuit against the county and if we as a county should lose that lawsuit then a federal judge could be the one that tells us what size jail to build and it would have to be done by federal rather than state standards which could cost as much as two and a half times more than it might otherwise,” said Sheriff Ray.
“I understand the county has been talking about building a school and I know a jail is not a popular thing to build anywhere but it is the law that the county commission maintain the jail. TCI has come in here and had their say and now its up to the county commission to act. I will say the county commission has been great to work with on this. We have had several meetings and every month I have to send the state reports as per our plan of action as to how many male and female inmates we have including those sentenced and non-sentenced and the number of felonies and misdemeanors, and child support cases etc. but the flip side of that is by doing this we are showing along with the meetings we have that we are following our plan of action. As long as we are showing a movement forward in trying to remedy the problems we have, they (TCI) will leave us under that plan of action and not decertify the jail. If we stop following the plan of action, they will decertify and that opens the county up for lawsuits. By being certified we have a blanket with TCI because if the county should get sued over something to do with the jail, TCI will come to our defense and that goes a long way in a lawsuit,” said Sheriff Ray.
The mission of TCI is mostly advisory. It’s up to the county commission to decide on a specific course of action, whether it be future construction of a new jail or criminal justice center, or expansion of the existing facility. A decision of that kind is not expected to happen anytime soon. Months of meetings and planning have to go into any project under consideration. “The only role we (TCI) play in this is the educational part of it. We are not here to say you have to do this or that. TCI oversees compliance. We are not regulatory. It just behooves a county to be in compliance to ensure that you are running a constitutionally correct jail so that if you have to go to court, we can go to court with you. We (TCI) certify the officers’ training and certify the jail to make sure it follows certain guidelines to standards,” Bass said.