The newly formed ad hoc jail committee of the county commission met last Monday night with the Deputy Director of the Tennessee Correction Institute where he made recommendations for addressing deficiencies at the DeKalb County Jail and Annex.
TCI Deputy Director Bob Bass will be working with the committee to establish a plan of action regarding short and long term solutions to recommend to the full county commission.
Those on the ad hoc jail committee include Sheriff Patrick Ray, Chief Deputy Robert Patrick, County Mayor Tim Stribling, Criminal Court Judge Gary McKenzie, Assistant District Attorney General Greg Strong, county commissioners Scott Little, Beth Pafford, Bobby Johnson, Anita Puckett, Sabrina Farler, and Matt Adcock.
Several
findings were identified during a state inspection of the jail on August 22 and
while a follow-up inspection on October 4 revealed some of the issues had been
addressed, others remain which will require a longer term fix. Although many of
these same deficiencies have existed for years, both the jail and annex have
consistently passed annual state inspections until this year.
While the jail and annex (certified for 102 beds) are not currently overcrowded at 83 inmates a major concern is that the facilities do not meet the state square footage per inmate space requirements. Another problem is the age of the buildings. The original jail was built in 1959 and lacks many state required essentials such as natural lighting and a sprinkler system among others. The annex was added in 2001 and has issues of its own.
The jail and annex have been re-certified by the state for another year but to qualify the county had to request a partnership with TCI and the County Technical Advisory Service (CTAS) to show that it plans to make “measurable” progress over a period of time in upgrading the facilities in order to maintain jail certification going forward.
TCI Director Bass stated to the committee that the jails are inspected once per year without an announcement. Compliance components include inmate housing, medical, disciplinary and more numbering up to a total of 430. If standards are not met, the check is done again in 60 days. If unsatisfactory standards are not met, the jail and county must file a plan of action. He also reiterated how important it is to maintain jail certification, especially in the event of a federal lawsuit.
Bass said while the problems at the jail and annex cannot be fixed overnight the county is on the right track in showing the state a good faith effort in trying to address them.
“Your job as a steering or ad hoc committee is to let the jail experts come in and tell you what is wrong with the jail and make suggestions to upgrade and fix them and let you go in front of the full county commission and make recommendations. You have some real serious physical plant problems at the jail which may require you to have to throw a little money at but let’s see what we can do. What I try to do is look at things we can fix without spending a lot of taxpayer dollars,” he said.
