Sullivan County Jail
A representative of the Tennessee Board of State Charities, which is authorized by law to investigate all public institutions in the State, has inspected Sullivan County Jail at Blountville and found it to be in deplorable condition as to sanitary arrangements and conduct.
In the first place, according to the inspector’s report, fifty-nine prisoners were crowded into the jail, which has a maximum capacity of twenty-five. The condition makes proper care of the prisoners impossible, to begin with, but it is only part of the trouble. The jail is practically without toilet facilities and the plumbing is miserable. There are practically no bathing facilities. There is no running water, and drinking water must be carried to the prisoners in buckets. Each cell is provided with a straw tick and these ticks are filthy. There is an average of seven prisoners to a call when there should not be more than two. The floors, walls, bars, windows, cells, everything is insanitary, and the atmosphere in the jail is foul. The jail yard presents the appearance of a city dump and the filth is sufficient to jeopardize the health of the prisoners and the entire community.
There, briefly, are the conditions which the secretary of the Board of State Charities found at the Blountville jail. The board recommends that the two large rooms on the first floor be property fitted up with cells, which would give capacity for at least twenty more prisoners; that the jail be equipped with sufficient toilet and bathing facilities; that hammocks or bunks take place of the filthy straw ticks; that provision be made for the separation of white and colored women prisoners; that a water system be installed; that provision be made for the separation of young and first offenders from older offenders; that prisoners be provided with a change of clothing and opportunity to bathe at least once a week; that the entire interior of the jail be cleaned and painted and kept in proper sanitary conditions.
The County Court should adopt the recommendations of the State Board of Charities and proceed as soon as possible to make the needed improvements. The jail should never have been allowed to get in the condition in which the Board found it. A further idea on just how disgraceful this condition is may be gained from that fact, as stated by the inspector, that some of the prisoners have been in jail for more than seven months without a change of clothing and without an opportunity to wash the clothes they have been wearing.
Proper sanitation being practically impossible as long as the jail is so badly overcrowded, probably the first step that should be taken is to equip the two large rooms mentions with cells. In the meantime, the county officers might cease to arrest tramps or “hobos” who are not suspicious characters or who may be trying to make their way out of the county. Also, it may be well enough to relieve the congested conditions of the jail by releasing some of the tramps not confined there on condition that they leave the county.
