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| Hernando County's takeover of jail brings year of sweeping changes |
| By By John Woodrow Cox and Barbara Behrendt, , Times Staff Writers, tampabay.com |
| Published: 08/28/2011 |
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BROOKSVILLE - Maj. Michael Page shook his head. When the 39-year corrections veteran led the Sheriff's Office in its takeover of the Hernando County Detention Center last August, most of the 177 employees from the private company that had run the facility applied for new jobs. Page interviewed every one of those applicants. He hired just 45 of them. As he thought back on Thursday to the transition, the major said most of those he rejected either failed background checks or just didn't meet his standards. "Frankly," Page said, "I don't understand why a few of them weren't in jail." Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the takeover. Since then, Page has made sweeping changes. He's upgraded the jail's technology, overhauled its security and cut significant costs - all with 39 fewer staff members than Corrections Corporation of America, which had managed the facility for 22 years. Still, the jail faces considerable challenges that officials say CCA left behind. The same major maintenance problems that last year erupted into controversy are still not fixed, and it's unclear whether the money set aside by the County Commission will be enough to build a planned new standalone medical facility and cover the numerous repairs ahead. Most of the physical problems could have been avoided, Page said, if CCA had just honored its agreement with the county. "If they had performed routine maintenance as they should have and as their contract required," he said, "this building would look 10 times better." Because of the unresolved maintenance questions, the county withheld a $1.8 million final payment to CCA and has been sued in federal court by the company. That case is not yet resolved. While concerns about the facility's future still linger, one thing has changed dramatically - the way the jail operates. . . . Their hands and feet shackled, five men wearing orange jumpsuits shuffled through a sally port and placed their backs against a wall. Soon, they would have their mug shots snapped and their fingerprints taken before being assigned a cell. When CCA ran the jail, outgoing inmates left through the same sally port. Placing the entrance and exit all in the same spot, Page said, was dangerous and in one case led to a prisoner's escape. "Scary as hell," he called the design. click here Read More. |
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