Jail crowding forces new procedures

BANGOR – It was the potentially dangerous mixture that had worried Penobscot County Jail officials, where crowded conditions combined with inmates agitated over medical treatment.

Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross on Friday described the situation officials faced July 13 – the day that jail officials found they had 13 inmates in a holding area designed for six – as a “cauldron of despair.”

The day became a turning point of sorts for the county jail.

Since then, jail officials have rethought how they deal with some inmates in an effort to curb the kind of predicaments they faced last week.

On that day, Ross and Capt. Robert Carlson – jail chaplain and the department’s director of planning and staff development – found the holding area was wall-to-wall inmates.

The two officials threaded their way past seven inmate mattresses on the main floor to reach the six main holding cells, each housing an inmate.

One man in a holding cell, stripped of all his clothing, had tried to commit suicide twice by using his paper bedsheet.

An agitated inmate began fueling discontent among the other inmates inside, the jail officials said.

Carlson and Ross did what they could to defuse the situation and then left.

“Immediately my radar goes up to say that this is not going anyplace but downhill from here,” Carlson said Friday. In the days that followed, jail and medical personnel drafted and then implemented a new

plan for dealing with inmates who need additional supervision and attention and who are not ready to be returned to the regular jail population or to other facilities, such as a hospital, or to special release programs.

When needed, they will turn the jail’s D-block, normally housing 10 inmates, into a special management area where inmates can get one-on-one access to a medical person who can help address the inmate’s concerns.

The new block is not permanent but rather is part of a fluid system that is put in place when needed. Carlson likened it to when St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor fills its seven critical care beds, opens more critical care beds to meet the need and then reduces the beds once the need is gone.

The new procedures were implemented July 16, and jail officials and medical personnel under contract to the jail have seen improvements already, Ross said.

The changes are part of the county’s larger plan to alleviate crowding at the jail while helping to address the mental health issues that increasingly are being faced inside the facility.

Local law enforcement officials have said the jail is becoming a de facto mental health facility.

While there is talk about building another jail, Ross knows any new facility is a long way away and he needs immediate solutions. Costs arising from crowded jails continue to chip away at the budget.

On Friday, the Penobscot County Jail was boarding out 18 inmates to other county facilities at a cost that Ross estimated at $2,000 per day, not including transportation costs.

County officials hope to reduce the crowding problem through training police officers and deputies on the street to defuse situations that otherwise might result in an arrest of someone with mental health problems.

Ross said law enforcement officers already receive some training in managing aggressive behavior, but this would be even more advanced training.

Meanwhile, a task force of law enforcement and medical and mental health professionals already is meeting and looking for funds to establish programs to better meet the needs of people with mental health issues in and out of the jail.