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| Report: State's jails are unsafe |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 09/12/2003 |
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Many of Tennessee's jails are crowded and unsafe, but the state has no authority to close them or force improvements, according to a critical report by the state comptroller's office. The Tennessee Corrections Institute oversees some 130 city and county jails but can't sanction them or remove inmates, 'resulting in conditions that endanger inmates, staff and the public,'' according to the report. TCI's only authority is in certification or decertification of the jails, which typically are run by sheriffs in the state's 95 counties. Sen. Doug Jackson, chairman of the Legislature's Oversight Committee on Corrections, hopes lawmakers will change that. 'That will be the focus of the next meeting. TCI has a job that we're expecting them to do and we need to come up with some way of empowering them or restructuring them to get it done,'' he said Friday. The comptroller's report was presented Thursday to the committee. It said that during visits to 11 jails, staff found such crowded conditions that inmates were sleeping on the floor in cells or hallways and blocking exits; violent inmates were housed with those deemed nonviolent; and ropes, mirrors and other items that could be used for suicides or assaults were available. Part of the crowding problem is that the state hasn't built a new prison that could free up space in local jails. Lawmakers appropriated the first $37 million for a prison in fiscal 1995-96, but a site was never approved. Some $165.4 million in state and federal dollars is now available for construction of a prison that is expected to house about 2,300 inmates once it opens in 2006. Gov. Phil Bredesen, who took office in January, this week delayed recommending a prison site until later this month. Five sites in four counties - Bledsoe, Morgan, Trousdale and Weakley - are under consideration. Tennessee prisons are operating at 96 percent capacity - with about 20,000 inmates. There's a similar number of inmates in local jails, an increase of 56 percent since 1991. According to the report, 60 county jails operated at an average capacity of 100 percent or greater during fiscal 2001-02, limiting their ability to provide adequate safety, medical care, food service, recreation and sanitation. Some 1,900 of the inmates in local jails are awaiting transfer to prisons, but the counties also are voluntarily contracting with the state to permanently house about 4,100 felons who were locally sentenced. Sen. Jim Kyle, D-Memphis, said during the committee meeting that he doesn't understand why that is happening. 'If counties have overcrowded jails, they don't have to house our inmates.'' In fiscal 2002, the state paid more than $104 million to 102 local jails. Legislators enacted laws regarding prison overcrowding because of inmate lawsuits that resulted in federal court oversight. But they 'offer no contingencies for overcrowded local jails,'' according to the report. 'Without sanctions, counties often fail to correct conditions that may be dangerous and likely to result in costly lawsuits,'' the comptroller's office wrote. Last year, 25 county jails failed to meet TCI's certification standards and nine currently are operating under court mandate or consent decree. The comptroller recommended that lawmakers provide TCI with the power to prohibit state prisoners from being held in unsafe jails and the authority to ask the state attorney general to petition courts to close jails that fail to correct unsafe conditions. State law also prohibits TCI from decertifying deficient jails if the county submits a plan to correct them, according to the report, giving counties a loophole to delay implementing those plans indefinitely and yet remain certified. The report also found that TCI is understaffed, performs inadequate inspections, and has minimal standards for certification of jails and their employees. TCI's assistant director, Peggy Sawyer, disagreed with some of the findings but agreed that the agency's only authority currently is certification. She said the best way to increase its power would be allowing TCI to sanction the jails. |
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