Jail problems persist; officials cite progress.
Rape. Murder. Strip-searches. These are just a few of the reasons Santa Fe County Jail made headlines in 2004.
"There have been issues at the jail," Management Training Corporation Communications Director Carl Stuart says in what's arguably the understatement of the year. But, he
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adds, "we've been able to work through them."
In fact, the jail, which is run by MTC, is still working through the lawsuits, settlements and other legal matters thrust upon it as a result of its problems [SFR Talk, Oct. 13: "Jail Tales"].
However, with changes in operation procedures in the works, perhaps next year the jail's "issues" won't involve violence and/or degradation.
First, in 2005, the jail is set to come into compliance with the Department of Justice, which released a highly critical report of health and safety issues at the jail in 2003. The County entered into an agreement with the DOJ this fall to improve conditions. "Then we can get completely settled and continue on working on being a safe place," Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano says.
To ensure safety at the jail and have it run smoothly, a number of procedural or policy changes have recently been put into place or are in the process of being put in place. "We just hired
a court liaison, a person who's going to work on helping inmates move through the system faster," Solano says. "We're having people stay in jail for too long, waiting for court hearings. The court liaison makes sure they don't fall through the cracks." While Solano says it's the courts' responsibility to wade inmates through the system, the backlog of cases causes problems at the jail. "It's a safety issue as well as a money issue," he says.
In addition to a court liaison, the jail will have a compliance officer to ensure that it remains in accordance with the guidelines outlined in the DOJ settlement.
Additionally, at the beginning of the year, the jail passed the American Correctional Association accreditation, which makes it easier to compare conditions within it to those of other
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facilities. "That's a real big deal," Stuart says. "Only 3 percent of jails have ACA accreditation. Accreditation can allow you to compare a correctional facility in Florida with one in Maine, with one in New Mexico. Passing that is one of our accomplishments."
If receiving ACA accreditation was a highlight of 2004, the rapes that allegedly occurred at the jail in the spring and the fall were definite lows. The most recent alleged rape occurred in the jail's booking area, when a female arrested for drunk driving was reportedly left alone with male inmates. As a result of the circumstances in which the alleged incident occurred, changes have been made to the physical layout of the jail. "Now we have a designated area for male and female booking," Warden Kerry Dixon says. "We've installed phones that are no-charge in the booking area." There also will be more correctional officers to oversee the booking area and other parts of the jail. "We entered into a new contract with the County Oct. 1 and, with that new contract, there was additional correctional staff put into the contract, about 20 additional correctional staff, and that's still in the works."
Also in the works is a shift in the jail's strip-search policy, which came under fire after a bartender filed a lawsuit after she was strip-searched following an arrest for selling alcohol to minors. "Strip-searches will be limited to violent offenders, to drug-related offenses," Dixon says. "The new policy will have a decision tree matrix that the office can follow as [wards] come in."
Overall Dixon, who says he "felt like the wind had been taken out of [his] sails" during certain points of 2004, feels relieved in light of the changes. "I feel much better about the jail," he says. "Every day that passes I feel much better."
