PALM BEACH, Fla. – In 2008, a supervisor at the county jail here alerted staff members to the needs of an inmate serving an 18-month sentence for sex crimes involving a minor. Jeffrey Epstein, he wrote in a memo, was a first-time offender “poorly versed in jail routine,” and “his adjustment to incarceration will most likely be atypical.”

“For the time being, I am authorizing that his cell door be left unlocked and he be given liberal access to the attorney room where a TV will be installed,” Capt. Mark Chamberlain wrote in August of that year.

The memo does not indicate how long the cell door was to be left unlocked, but it and other documents obtained through public-records requests shed new light on the apparent deference granted to the wealthy financier while in the custody of Palm Beach County, as well as on the conditions of his confinement.

During much of his sentence, Epstein was allowed to leave the county’s minimum-security stockade 12 hours a day, six days a week, for a work-release program, a job at a nonprofit foundation he had created. Sheriff’s deputies assigned to monitor the multimillionaire on these outings allowed him to enter his Palm Beach estate on at least nine occasions toward the end of his sentence, at least once unattended and for four hours, according to the deputies’ reports.

Ric Bradshaw, the Palm Beach County sheriff then and now, on Friday announced an internal-affairs investigation into the actions of deputies assigned to monitor Epstein on work release. “All aspects of the matter will be fully investigated to ensure total transparency and accountability,” Bradshaw, whose office operates county detention centers, said in a statement. – READ MORE