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Sheriff seeks more involved role at jail

He wants his office to take over fingerprinting and photographing new inmates to more quickly get them on databases.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published January 25, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - The Hernando County Sheriff's Office doesn't run the county jail; that job is left to Corrections Corporation of America. But on Tuesday, after months of persistent problems at the facility, Sheriff Richard B. Nugent recommended that his office take over fingerprinting and photographing the inmates at a cost of $305,000 for six new deputies.

The announcement won wide support at the Hernando County Commission meeting, on a day when county staffers recommended a fine and series of actions against the jail operators in connection with two suicides there in the past three months.

Commissioner Robert C. Schenck praised the sheriff's fingerprinting proposal.

"In my opinion, we should do this, but because of the ineptitude of CCA we should subtract this (cost) from CCA's budget," he told the commission.

Also at the meeting, Jim Gantt, the county's purchasing director, recommended a fine of roughly $20,000 for "gross negligence" on CCA's part in the hanging death of Geoffrey M. Conley, on Jan. 5. The fine is equal to 2.5 percent of the payment the county was supposed to make for January.

Video surveillance has shown that Conley, 21, was unchecked for more than two hours before he hanged himself earlier this month.

In addition, Gantt recommended hiring someone with corrections experience to be assigned to the jail and monitor its operations. In an interview after the meeting, Gantt said the new jail monitor could report to him, directly to the board, or to the sheriff.

In their meeting, the county commissioners took the discussion even further than Gantt's recommendations, asking what the alternatives were to contracting with CCA to run the jail. The commissioners discussed the possibility of creating a county department of corrections or of asking the Sheriff's Office to take over the jail, which has been operated by CCA since 1988 and currently holds 550 inmates.

But no votes were taken Tuesday on the jail issues.

At the next meeting Feb. 14, staffers are to report back to the commission with the breadth of the commission's choices, including contract termination.

"Anything we do extra, that responsibility belongs to CCA from a financial perspective," said Commissioner Nancy Robinson.

County Attorney Garth C. Coller warned that the $300,000 expense of taking over fingerprinting and photographing could not be imposed on CCA unilaterally. The contract would have to be opened up and renegotiated, Coller said. If CCA does not agree to shoulder the expense, the commission would have to fund the sheriff's request on its own, or turn down the request.

The other alternative was what Coller described as a clause that would allow either party to terminate the contract with the jail provided they give 120 days notice.

CCA corporate spokesman Steven Owen said he had not been formally contacted by the county about either the sheriff's request or the matters discussed at the commission meeting so he would not comment on them.

"Certainly if the county determines there are some concerns they want to address we would most certainly respond to them in an appropriate fashion," he said.

Nugent said in an interview at his office that he had no confidence in the jail staff's ability to fingerprint and photograph inmates correctly.

In December, Nugent complained that the jail had a backlog of more than 700 arrests that had not been entered into the statewide, electronic fingerprint database. This was the largest backlog of any county in the state and included a number of sex offenders whose arrests were never counted.

He said it was "imperative" these arrests be recorded especially because the Jessica Lunsford Act demands that the State Attorney's Office and the court system be notified when someone is a sexual offender.

"They have failed to fingerprint a number of sexual offenders in the last few years and that is a huge safety hazard and we can't risk having that slip through the cracks," Nugent said.

The backlog has since been brought down to zero, reported jail warden Arvil "Butch" Chapman, but Nugent said he wasn't satisfied.

"I'm not convinced that in the long term it's going to stay that way and I'm not going to continue to look over their shoulder to make sure that it does," he said. "It's an important process and I don't think they've given it that attention just like checking on people in isolation."

He said the model he is proposing is the same model currently in place in the Citrus County jail, which also is operated by CCA.

Warden Chapman said late Tuesday afternoon that he did not yet have a response to the sheriff's proposal. Chapman also said he hadn't heard about the discussion of the jail at the commission meeting and wouldn't be able to comment on Gantt's recommendations until he had seen an official copy.

The furor at the meeting came after revelations from the Sheriff's Office on Friday that no one had walked by Conley's cell to do an inspection for more than two hours before he died.

After the fact, officials at the jail and the Sheriff's Office reviewed surveillance video and found that the last time Conley was visible at the window of his cell was at 6:22 p.m., more than an hour before he was found dead.

The jail's own policy requires that inmates in isolation be checked every 30 minutes.

Gantt's report to the commission found CCA's handling of the death "problematic" for the following reasons: Conley was "recognized as having mental health problems from the outset" and yet was not put on the suicide watch the day he died. He was not checked on as often as required. And, Gantt's report states, "CCA employees falsified log records indicating that they "visually' observed inmate Conley but received only minor disciplinary action."

Two corrections officers - Joel Cruz and Reynaldo Luciano - were singled out for not complying with the jail's policy on making a "walk-through inspection to visually check the well-being security of the inmates," according to the disciplinary forms. They received written reprimands and no other punishment.

Asked whether the punishments were adequate, Gantt emphatically said "No."

Commissioner Robinson suggested an independent investigation that would cover every aspect of the jail's operation. "Let CCA know that this board is concerned is not satisfied with its performance as it has continued to unravel over the last five months," she said.

In talking about the two deaths in three months at the jail, Gantt said "that's not good, but it's not terrible either." He explained that the number of suicides at the facility was less than average for county jails of its size.

Commissioner Christopher Kingsley interrupted him.

"One is too many. If there were procedures that should have been followed and could have saved one, this quantumly exacerbates this," Kingsley said. "Something has to be done to make sure it runs properly whether by CCA or the Sheriff's Office."

Gantt said he agreed that one was too many.

"The second one bothers me tremendously," he said. "You would think after the first one people would take extra care to prevent what had happened. They didn't."

Reached after the meeting, Commissioner Jeff Stabins was pleased the board's concerns had been aired.

"If we haven't gotten CCA's attention by now, we never will," he said.

Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or 352 754-6114.

[Last modified January 25, 2006, 00:55:16]