Courts help prevent overcrowding Escambia County Jail in wake of coronavirus policy shifts

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It is business as usual at the Escambia County Jail, where officials say that the Florida Supreme Court's steps to slow down intake has reduced population enough to maintain safe social distancing.

Florida Chief Justice Charles Canady on March 16 temporarily suspended criminal and civil jury trials, grand jury proceedings and jury selection proceedings statewide in an effort to reduce the spread of the new coronavirus.

“We’ve seen a little bit of relief from the courts, as they have taken some very good measures to resolve quite a few cases and help reduce the population,” said Escambia County Director of Corrections Rich Powell.

“It’s not that they are just necessarily letting people out,” he continued. “But they were able to reset some bonds, look at some other issues they had control over and expedite some docket processes.”

Related: Escambia County Courthouse access limited to select people due to coronavirus outbreak

More court news: Florida courts suspend trials to slow coronavirus, postponing Naomi Jones murder trial

Access to the Escambia County Courthouse has been limited to people with official business and many court hearings and matters have been postponed due to COVID-19, but specific plea hearings governing current county inmates’ ability to receive bonds will continue to be heard.

People with lesser criminal charges that carry penalties other than jail or prison time have been able to plea to their charges, receive bonds and be released from custody.

“Anybody that is in jail who is entering a plea in a case that would result in a non-incarcerative sentence, those pleas are continuing to be taken, and they are scheduling a time to make those available,” explained Assistant State Attorney Greg Marcille. “Those pleas would result in those individuals being released from jail at the earliest possible time.”

An administrative directive signed Friday by Circuit Court Judge Jan Shackelford ensured that this type of plea hearing will continue to take place despite other coronavirus-related restrictions placed on court proceedings.

The Florida Department of Corrections began restricting state prisons’ intake of inmates from county systems on March 16. This meant that inmates housed in county jails, who would normally have been moved out of those jails and into state penitentiaries, had to stay put.

The FDOC will reevaluate the policy on March 30 to determine its plan moving forward. Unless the policy persists for an exorbitant amount of time, Powell said he won’t have to worry about overcrowding at the Escambia County Jail.

The county jail still has some empty cells, and therefore some wiggle room.

“When I first got here 19 months ago, our population was 1,800. We’re sitting at 1,400 right now,” Powell said. “So we’ve got room to flex, and we’ll handle more than that, if we even have to.”

For now, despite COVID-19’s disruption of many American’s lives, the Escambia County Jail is functioning much in the same way that it always has, Powell said.

Anyone wishing to visit an inmate inside the Escambia County Jail can still make an appointment online for a video visit, and the Escambia County Jail’s visitation center is still operating at normal hours.

Powell added that his staff continues to take all the precautionary hygiene measures to prevent illness from spreading inside the jail’s confined spaces that they normally would.

“Most people that have never worked in our profession don’t really understand it,” he said. “Our sense of awareness and cognitive thought processes as far as an infectious environment go are always vigilant — to the level that it’s a continuous state of readiness.”

He added that all of the Escambia County Jail’s daily operations and routines have remained the same since the outbreak of the coronavirus.

In neighboring Santa Rosa County, anyone looking to visit an inmate in their facility can no longer access the video monitors located near their jail’s entrance.

Instead, those who wish to visit an inmate housed within the Santa Rosa County Jail can schedule an at-home, video conference with an inmate using their own electronic devices.

Colin Warren-Hicks can be reached at colinwarrenhicks@pnj.com or 850-435-8680.