Proposed minimum standards for 20,000 inmates in Ohio jails would allow sheriffs to limit prisoners to two meals a day, reduce showers to every other day and shorten visitation time.
The new rules also would greatly improve treatment of mentally ill inmates but would dramatically reduce mandatory training for jail employees and potentially allow sheriffs to better fend off prisoner lawsuits. ?
The proposed changes result from a 2012 statewide jail survey and assessment.
Enforcing the standards is another matter. After more than four years with no jail inspections, now only two state employees are assigned to inspect 92 full-service jails, 13 minimum-security jails, 90 12-day jails, 18 12-hour jails and 136 temporary holding facilities.
Bob Cornwell, executive director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association, bluntly admits that much of the motivation behind the revised standards is to limit liability and accompanying costs of prisoner lawsuits. Sheriffs say their jails and budgets are straining under the increased costs of housing, feeding and caring for a growing number of prisoners.
"The lawsuits on jail conditions have become a real problem. Lowering the standards reduces the liability," Cornwell said. "These suits are being settled for tens of thousands of dollars; it's expensive to pay that kind of money."
Ohio counties have paid out tens of millions of dollars in damages in recent years to prisoners or their families who won lawsuits claiming that inmates were confined in inhumane conditions or mistreated by jailers, in some cases dying in custody.
While not "driven by the dollar," the standards involve "common sense" changes that would allow sheriffs to operate their jails more efficiently, Cornwell said. The new rules are not "cruel and unusual punishment," he added, noting that sheriffs have a stake in running decent jails to both avoid liability and ensure that their jail staffs and prisoners have a safe environment.
Response mixed
Alphonse Gerhardstein, a Cincinnati lawyer who handles numerous cases involving medical care and mental-health treatment for inmates in jails and state prisons, ripped the proposed changes.
"They don't want to be held accountable. They need to be vigorously watched," Gerhardstein said. "This represents a step backward, a loosening of oversight by the state. I think this will increase their liability."
He faulted the prisons agency for having just two people assigned to jail inspections. "They just can't do the job. It's not time to relax standards; it's time to strengthen them."
Similarly, James Kronenberger of CURE, an Ohio advocacy group for inmates and their families, said he fears the changes would "make it more difficult for inmates and families. We'll definitely be opposed to many of them."
"Cutting down meals from three to two is bad," he said. "Even three meals isn't enough with what they serve."
Sara Andrews, court and community manager for state prisons, said going from three meals to two won't change the caloric content for inmates; they will get more food at each meal, which can be no more than 14 hours apart.
But officials of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Ohio say they are very encouraged about rule changes that would, for the first time, put prisoners' mental-health needs on par with medical needs.
Jail officials must establish a process in which incoming inmates are questioned about suicidal thoughts and mental-health concerns; offer 24-hour access to mental health care; and ensure that inmates get the medications they need.
"Unfortunately, many jails are housing people with these illnesses," NAMI Ohio Executive Director Terry Russell said. "The jails have been a problem. They're independent. ... There are jails in Ohio where patients on psychotropic medications are removed from all medications. That's just a disaster."
Sheriff's Lt. Troy Rine, administrator of the Pickaway County jail, which opened in 1992 and houses 110 prisoners, still is evaluating the proposal, but he said, "We're not going to change our standards because they are changing the minimums."
Three daily meals, daily showers and other practices will remain the same, he said.
Keeping up with the rules
Monitoring compliance with jail standards is up to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, which runs the adult prison system but not the jails, which are locally operated.
No jail inspections took place for more than four years, but the agency is ramping up an inspection program using the new rules, said Sara Andrews, court and community manager for state prisons.
Doing that, however, will require on-site inspections at 349 jails across the state. Those inspections, which are to examine 150 standards at each jail, are supposed to be done annually, although only two people are assigned to the job.
Andrews said the agency will do whatever it must to complete inspections, including bringing on more personnel.
The Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, another state agency, offered to help with inspections 18 months ago, but it backed down after receiving a sharply worded warning from state Sen. Keith Faber, R-Celina.
Faber was not on the committee, nor was he Senate president, when he sent a letter to Joanna Saul, CIIC director, saying she was not authorized and did not have funding to inspect jails. Doing so was "impractically duplicative" of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction's work, he said.
But no inspections were being done at the time because of a combination of budget constraints and other duties.
The death of Edward Peterson on Sept. 4, 2011, at the Franklin County jail on Jackson Pike shows why jail standards matter.
Peterson, 48, a mentally ill Columbus man who suffered from heart problems, died in an isolation cell described in a jail memo as "a mass of putrid filth." He did not have a mattress. Trash and feces were so bad that Columbus paramedics called to the scene declared a "bio alert" and had to be decontaminated.
"Updated rules would be great, but if the ones that are already in place are not followed, it's fair to say that the new ones will not be either," said Columbus lawyer Joseph Russell, who filed a wrongful-death and civil-rights lawsuit on behalf of Peterson's family.
Although Franklin County sheriff's officials declined to comment, Maj. Douglas Edgington, commander of the Jackson Pike jail, accused the jail staff in an internal memo shortly after Peterson's death of "deliberate indifference and deceptive practice."
He also said it was "painfully evident in that our staff failed to provide this inmate that which is required in accordance (with) the minimum standards for jails in Ohio."
Copyright 2014 - The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
