August 16, 2023
By: Dwayne Page
A dilemma!
For at least four years the county has been advised by the Tennessee Corrections Institute about deficiencies at the jail which might result in state decertification unless the county followed a plan of action, especially with regard to the basement of the 64-year-old portion of the facility.
Tuesday, the county learned it could wait no longer.
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During a visit, TCI officials determined that the jail’s number of certifiable beds at 102 (78 males and 24 females) must be reduced to no more than 52 (16 females and 36 males) almost immediately and that the basement portion of the older jail facility, which housed 23 inmates, can no longer be used for that purpose. TCI plans to make a return visit soon for an official inspection to see that the county is complying.
Sheriff Patrick Ray informed members of the county commission’s jail committee of the TCI visit during a meeting Tuesday night.
The TCI finding means that 29 inmates currently in the jail complex will have to be housed at jails in other counties at a projected cost of $55.40 per day. At 29 prisoners, that comes to more than $1,600 per day to the county and in a year’s time could reach almost $600,000. That does not take into account the added costs to the county of transporting prisoners back and forth for their scheduled court dates here.
“You just can’t count the $55.40 a day to house inmates because you will have transportation costs with the vehicles, fuel, and officer costs to go pick them up and these extra costs will inflate my budget”, said Sheriff Ray.
Among the concerns triggering this move by TCI are that portions of the jail do not meet the state’s per prisoner square footage clear floor space requirement for authorized housing and the jail basement has no natural light. There are other issues at both the older jail facility and the jail annex.
“We now know that (some cells) are no longer certified housing,” said Sheriff Ray. “We have a letter (from TCI) confirming that and they have told us that so liability rests with us (county) do to something with them (prisoners)”.
“We were at 102 beds but now we are down to 52 certified beds,” Sheriff Ray continued. “We are to close the basement that is not certifiable housing anymore. There are about 23 people down there in the basement today”.
“We already know we will run into some problems because now if we have a prisoner who has been an informant or someone who can’t get along with another prisoner in the jail annex two cells in the basement that gave us a place for them to go are no longer available to us and we don’t have that luxury”.
“Our game plan is to take the women prisoners (from main floor of the older portion of jail), after the judge and district attorney general go through the list of them and see what we need to do in placing them wherever we can throughout the state, put our sex offenders in the women’s cells (after the women are moved out), and put our trustees in the side cells (main floor of older building). That will get all the (male) prisoners out of the basement (older building). We will move them as quickly as we can but every time we arrest a female we will have to find a jail to house them if they can’t make bond and every time they have a court date we will have to go get them and then take them back.”
Sheriff Ray addressed with the jail committee a few of the specific jail deficiencies that has led to this move by TCI.
“There were some questions about natural lighting in the max dorm (jail annex) and in the old (building) main cell. They want us to go in there and cut holes out into walls (to allow for natural light). There are some old windows there in the old part of the jail with metal across them so we are hoping we can do this (provide natural lighting) there instead of going through the brick because the jail has a lot of rebar in the walls,” said Sheriff Ray.
“We have to take all the bunks out of the max day room (jail annex) and there are probably three or four sets of bunks in there that will have to come out”.
“Where the air conditioner units come down in the main annex dorm, when the air comes out it hits the wall where there is some dust. They want us to wash the walls before they come back to do an official inspection because they said we would never pass inspection unless we do. In order to do this cleaning, we will have to get somebody to come in there (jail annex) with a high rise lift or scaffolding”.
‘In the side cells where we house women (main floor of older building), they have told us we can house no more than one inmate per cell (instead of two). We told them that is where we had planned to move the trustees (when the females are moved out) so they told us if we leave the side cell doors open where inmates can get into the hallway, they would allow two inmates in each side cell because there is a steel door at the end of that hallway that comes into the employee hallway and the prisoners would still be locked in, just not necessarily in the cells all the time”.
Sheriff Ray hopes to get some cooperation from the criminal court judges in finding workable solutions.
“We have talked to at least one of the (criminal court) judges and we will talk to the other two judges this week to see if there are any prisoners eligible to be released. One of the judges had talked about maybe allowing prisoners, who are nearing the end of their sentences, to do community service and for us to keep up with that so we might see if we could get with (County Mayor) Matt (Adcock) to let them come over to the dumpsites and pick up trash or unload vehicles, whatever we need them to do to get their time in.”
TCI officials had said in previous meetings with the county mayor, sheriff, and county commission that while the entire jail operation could maintain state certification as long as the county continued to make measurable progress under a master plan of action toward resolving the issues, the basement portion of facility would eventually have to close.
In February County Mayor Adcock unveiled his own master plan proposal for the county commission to consider during a 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 decided on a future course of action regarding a building plan but Tuesday’s move by TCI is expected to force the county to speed up its timetable.
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