County jail continues to work out the kinks.
The flower department at Whole Foods is a veritable Garden of Eden compared to the Spartan confines of Bravo 600. It smells better at any rate. Kathryn Bennett hardly minds that she's spent the last three hours waiting inside a grocery store for a ride to her home in Chimayó.
***image1***Bennett has been a free woman for little more than three hours. She spent the previous 192 imprisoned in the Bravo 600 pod of the Santa Fe Adult Detention Facility, serving the remainder of a 10-day sentence stemming from a traffic stop five years ago that spiraled into charges that included resisting, evading and obstructing an officer.
Eight days in the county jail isn't a stint on Riker's Island but it's not exactly a week in the Bahamas either. The 61-year-old Bennett gingerly pushes her cart of organic produce out the swooshing automatic doors of Whole Foods, joking that she's still hesitant to walk through any doorway without getting permission first. She declines to throw away the plastic Whole Foods cup clutched in her left hand. If incarceration has taught her anything, it's the importance of being resourceful.
"What you learn in jail is to make use of whatever you have," Bennett says. "Cups are at a premium. You don't throw away a piece of plastic because you can use it as a hair tie. If nothing else, it makes you realize how much you take the little things for granted."
Bennett served the first two days of her sentence back when the jail was still operated by the embattled private company Management & Training Corporation. Santa Fe County took over on Oct. 11 with the intention of turning around a jail that had notorious troubles with MTC at the helm.
"This jail was built about eight or nine years ago and it's been a problem ever since," says Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano. "It's not going to be an overnight change but we're committed to eventually making it the best jail in the state."
Solano says the county has made "big strides" toward turning the facility around, including upgrades in medical personnel, a renewed emphasis on administrative approachability and an ambitious overhaul of the jail's security, computer and phone systems.
But the transition hasn't been entirely smooth. Four days after the county took over operations, Carole Gutierrez-a 24-year-old inmate suffering from heroin withdrawal-died in a holding cell at the jail. The death served a somber reminder that Rome-let alone the county jail-wasn't rebuilt in a day.
Bennett says that while some aspects of the jail have improved considerably from her first residency under the MTC administration, many concerns still remain for those on the inside.
"Are we going to be absolutely perfect? Probably not," says Bill Blank, the jail's new warden. "But we are going to do our best to meet our population's needs. That said, jails are not meant to be comfortable, they are meant to be functional."
According to Bennett, the jail was barely that during her week in Bravo 600. Bennett says many inmates were woefully ill-equipped with basic materials like blankets, shoes and mattresses. Bennett says she implored her fellow inmates to submit written requests for the basic necessities but inevitably the requests went unfilled and the inmates were left to fend for themselves.
"It really seems that it's up to the prisoners to take care of other prisoners," Bennett says. "My experience was that the basic human rights and medical rights of prisoners were not being taken care of. There seemed to be a disconnect between the administration and the people on the ground.
"Somehow [requests] always seemed to get lost somewhere in the chain of command."
Bennett says she relied on the graces of fellow prisoners to help her acquire a blanket. She says she regularly saw women walking barefoot and helped nurse a fellow inmate-who had developed a debilitating cold after she purportedly spent 24 hours in a cold holding cell with no shoes, socks or mattress-back to health using hot-water bottles she fashioned out of empty plastic Pepsi containers. Bennett also reports that two women with staph infections were placed in the pod she shared with about 11 other women without any warning whatsoever.
"That is entirely possible," Blank says. "But we don't exactly have the right of refusal when it comes to who we admit into our facility. If the medical staff discovers a situation like that, they take recovery efforts as quickly as possible."
Blank acknowledges that it is going to take time to get the jail into full functioning order with a host of new staff, equipment and management.
"Obviously as things transition we try to stay on top of things as best we can," Blank says. "When we get a complete grip on things-and I think we are getting close to that point-there should be a more efficient application of the system."
The biggest challenge, Solano says, to reviving the jail has been assembling enough employees. The county has increased the jail's staff since taking over from MTC but the facility is still about 30 employees short.
"Staffing has been probably the biggest setback," Solano says. "Part of that is the recruiting pool-the job is not for everyone-but I think part of it is also the jail's reputation. We have to turn that perception around. We need to let people know that this isn't the place it used to be."
