No Room in the Jail

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No Room in the Jail

Bristol Herald Courier – …At least one new penitentiary is in the state budget for the coming year… If that occurs, it will sit well with Sullivan County officials, who see more prison construction as the only solution to the crisis… Read More

Sullivan County sheriff says ‘get tough on crime’ measures require more space Jail bays designed to hold a mere 16 inmates are crammed full of extra cots. Everywhere you look, there are people living within a few feet of each other — sprawled out reading, smoking cigarettes or listening to music. And while officials admit jail is not supposed to be a pleasant experience, Sullivan County’s lockup is virtually bursting at the seams. The jail is at, near or even over capacity almost all the time and the problem is at its worst on the weekends. Sullivan County’s jail has a capacity of 321 inmates including the jail annex behind the main facility, according to Chief Jack Sheppard of the Sullivan County Sheriffs Department. However, in February, the jail was overpopulated for seven days, and the jail population has hit 380 in the past six months. Those kinds of numbers have Sullivan County Sheriff Keith Carr worried about an impending overcrowding crisis like the one the county suffered four years ago. And with the “get tough on crime” mentality taking hold on a state level, Carr does not see the jail’s population decreasing anytime soon. The main problem — as Carr and Sheppard see it — is the Tennessee Department of Correction’s lack of bed space for its inmates. Because of overcrowding in the state prison system, many defendants sentenced to prison time by Sullivan County’s judges are serving much of their sentences at the local jail, Carr said. At one point last week, of the jail’s approximately 300 inmates, about 100 of them were actually TDOC prisoners waiting for a bed in the prison system, Carr said. That problem eased slightly when 17 of those inmates were transferred to the state system late last week, but inmate numbers could again soar over the weekend. “Once you are tried, convicted, sentenced and the papers signed, you should be the state’s responsibility,” Carr said. “By 1996, we've been told to expect overcrowding to be as bad if not worse than it was four years ago in the state prisons and the local jails.” Overcrowded conditions put a tremendous strain on corrections officers and sometimes even pose a security risk, Carr said. At one point, the Sullivan County Jail’s maximum-security wing was home to 17 armed robbers at the same time, Carr said, calling it an example of potential problems. And while the entire jail is tottering on the edge of a population crisis, overcrowding is already a fact of life in the women’s cell block. This weekend, 24 women were housed in a facility designed for no more than 20, and the population has climbed as high as 32 in recent weeks, Sheppard said. Plans are in the works to expand the women’s unit at the jail to house more inmates and to allow them to be classified according to their charges, Carr said. Currently, there is no way to separate women charged with violent felonies from women serving time on misdemeanor charges like driving under the influence, Carr said. “Were seeing women charged with armed robbery, murders, dealing drugs. It’s a variety of crime we didn’t see in this area,” Carr said. “But it is being addressed by the (Sullivan County) building committee.” Along with the plans to expand the Sullivan County facility, Carr pointed out that something must be done on the state level. The only way to avert a crisis will be the construction of more state prisons, Carr said. At least one new penitentiary is in the state budget for the coming year, Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist confirmed during a Kingsport appearance Friday to stump for his crime package. Sundquist said dealing with crime is a financial priority for the state and prison construction is part of that plan. “We are not going to have any capital construction next year except for a penitentiary,” Sundquist said. “We have money to expand (the prisons) and to have double celling (two inmates in one cell), We think prisoners shouldn’t be comfortable in prison.” If that occurs, it will sit well with Sullivan County officials, who see more prison construction as the only solution to the crisis. “This is not a Tennessee prison. Tennessee prisoners should be housed in a Tennessee prison,” Carr said of the jail. “My desire is to see the legislators who are talking tough on crime build more prisons.”
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