Overcrowding at Sarasota County Jail is still a big problem

SARASOTA COUNTY — A year after cautioning the Sarasota County Commission that his jail could be essentially inoperable based on trends in inmate population growth, Sheriff Tom Knight was back before the board to deliver a similar sobering warning: Overcrowding has gotten so bad that fights among cramped inmates have increased, leaving one with a broken jaw.

Knight appeared before the County Commission last week with an update on jail overcrowding — an issue that has plagued the aging facility on Ringling Boulevard, built in 1975, for years. The situation has worsened in the past year and if a solution isn’t reached, the only option is to build a roughly $100 million new county jail — an option Knight and commissioners said they’d like to avoid.

“I don’t think this community wants to build a jail,” Knight told the commission at its Oct. 23 meeting. “I don’t think this commission wants to build a jail.”

Although the facility can physically hold 1,020 inmates, it’s “operational” capacity is 867 because of different separation needs, such as by gender or by felony or misdemeanor. The population hovered in the 900s for several years, dipping below the operational capacity in 2016, and was above capacity with 930 inmates the week of Oct. 10, 2017, county documents show. The current population for the same week this year, according to figures from Knight, was 1,043 inmates — a 12 percent increase.

The overcrowding has earned the jail in October two violations of the Florida Model Jail Standards — one for housing two disabled inmates in the general population area, noncompliant with Americans with Disabilities Act standards, and another for deteriorating mattresses. To remedy the issues, the Sarasota County Jail has relocated the two inmates to the medical unit and will perform ADA modifications to four cells. Jail officials after the inspection ordered 600 mattresses in addition to 600 ordered in August, county documents show.

Fights have also increased due to the overcrowding, Knight said, adding he uses roughly 100 portable beds to accommodate the overflow. The jail reported three fights in the third quarter of this year, compared to none during the same time period last year, Knight said. One inmate sustained a broken jaw, Knight said.

“The overcrowding is not only affecting the inmate housing arrangements, but it’s also causing an increase in their disciplinary infractions, an increase in some of the fights we’ve had in the jail,” Knight said.

Although arrests this year have been down, Knight said the current overpopulation problem results from housing more inmates charged with or convicted of felonies — which carry longer sentences, lengthening their incarceration in the facility. Felony arrests are up from last year, while misdemeanors are down, county documents show.

“In one year, we’ve seen a 10 percent increase in our felony population and a 146-day increase for the felony length of stay,” Knight said. “Increased felony arrests and longer sentences for inmates typically are pretty simple to figure out — that increases your jail population.”

“All this data the last year shows the perfect storm we’re dealing with like we talked again last year,” Knight later added. “These factors have a significant impact on the county jail population.”

The commission did not take immediate action, instead opting to evaluate recently implemented initiatives and programs given more funding aimed at decreasing the jail population. The commission earlier this year allocated nearly $650,000 to create a Violations of Probation court to expedite felony cases to reduce the length of time in jail for those particular defendants, expand drug court and expand comprehensive treatment court.

Knight’s deputies have also increased the amount of notices to appear in court they write to avoid arresting accused offenders and added two more pods to help inmates with drug addiction and mental illness, county documents show.

At some point soon, officials, including judges, pubic defenders, prosecutors, the County Commission and Knight, must meet to get to the root of the problem, Commissioner Charles Hines said. The possibility of expanding the current jail or building a new one must also be part of the discussion, Hines said.

“This is something I don’t think we can ignore for much longer,” Hines said. “We’ve implemented some plans and our staff gave us the report, so over the next couple to three months, if the things that we have funded and the things that we have agreed with aren’t working — aren’t moving folks in a way that still provides safety for our community, but keeps our levels up too high in the jail — come December at our board priorities (meeting), we have to look at this.”

Commissioner Al Maio echoed Hines’ sentiment for expediency.

“We need to do something,” Maio said. “We do not want to be facing something a year from now — a year and a half from now — where there's no longer any more room to fix things with some temporary solutions.”

Knight agreed a meeting among criminal justice officials is warranted, adding unaffordable bonds, limited methods to bond out of jail and longer sentences are compounding the problem.

“We need to do better. And I think we can do better,” Knight said. “We have the right players; we need to get everybody in the room and talk about it.”