Deplorable conditions on display at Wayne County jails

Malfunctioning and antiquated fire alarm systems.

An infirmary without basic medical equipment.

The heavy stench of urine and body odor.

Outdated video recording equipment for security cameras.

Eight to 10 inmates sharing a single toilet, with no privacy, a short distance from their bunks.

The conditions at Wayne County’s three jails, seen by the Free Press during an exclusive tour, show the challenges jail staff face as the county works to comply with a court order to fix maintenance problems at the jails. At the same time, the county is grappling with what to do about the stalled jail project in downtown Detroit, which is still costing $1.2 million every month, more than two years after construction was halted because of cost overruns on what was supposed to be a state-of-the-art replacement.

In January, Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny issued an opinion and order to the county to develop a plan for preventative maintenance that would presumably fix a slew of problems at the jails, including a crumbling kitchen floor, drain fly larvae and organic matter in inmate showers and malfunctioning equipment. The order came as part of a long-standing legal case involving staffing and other issues at the jails, which the county is believed to be near settling.

“There’s no dispute,” said Jeriel Heard, chief of jails and courts for the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office. “We’re constantly dealing with issues involving our elevators, fire alarm panels and other health and safety equipment.”

Heard said jail staff is coping the best it can. The county has budgeted about $103 million for the jails. Officials have said that conditions deteriorated significantly in the absence of preventative maintenance, which the county apparently ended as a cost-saving measure once it embarked on the construction of what was to be the consolidated jail.

The county embarked earlier this year on a more-than-$330,000 study to assess the condition of the jails and what it would take to extend their operational lives for up to 20 years. Officials have indicated it would allow the county to make an informed decision about its options regarding jail facilities and what to do about the failed jail. The study, however, has also been criticized by union officials and others as a waste of money.

How the system works

The Free Press was given a rare tour of the three facilities in late July. Conditions and building designs varied at the facilities, which range in age from the 86-year-old Old Wayne County Jail, to the 31-year-old Andrew C. Baird Detention Facility and the 24-year-old William Dickerson Detention Facility in Hamtramck.

The two oldest jails sit on opposite sides of Clinton Street near the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. Underground tunnels connect all three facilities. Even the tunnel to the former Detroit police headquarters is still visible, although it’s blocked off. The William Dickerson facility is about 5 miles away.

They are run by the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, but building maintenance is handled by a division of the Department of Public Services under the county executive. The maintenance and equipment problems predate the current administration.

Collectively, the jails have housed, in recent days, between 1,700 and 1,750 inmates, although they have held hundreds more in the past.

Privacy, safety concerns

The Old Wayne County Jail, which opened in 1929, is believed to be one of the oldest operating jails in the country, and it looks the part.

The facility, which also has an annex built around 1962, holds maximum security inmates, including most of the system’s almost 400 capital offenders. Attorneys are shut inside with their clients in “professional visit cells,” which are perhaps 6 feet by 8 feet in size and where, Heard noted, attorneys have been groped and assaulted.

Lockboxes to control cell doors have a confusing set of knobs, which might look at home on an old pipe organ.

The dormitories feature eight to 10 bunk beds just feet away from a single toilet, where staff members say inmates use their own sheets to provide a bit of privacy and security cameras must peer through multiple sets of bars for a view of other cells, where toilets are also clearly visible.

Keeping the single showers in the dormitories cleaned and maintained is another challenge because they’re so often wet.

The jail also had a fire panel glitch on the day the Free Press visited, but the design of the unit, which staff said incorporates fire and duress alarms together, was most memorable. In addition to the audible alarms it would emit, the unit records incidents mechanically on a spool of paper, which would need to be unwound in order to review details.

But despite the heat of a more than 90-degree day, the air inside the jail felt comfortable and relatively fresh, thanks to a massive rented chiller brought in last year, officials said, because parts were not available to fix the old cooling system.

Mountain of problems

The air quality is not so good at the Andrew C. Baird Detention Facility. Some combination of urine, body odor and old-building scent hangs in the air.

Heard said part of the cooling system, which apparently has an uncleanable ventilation network, was out of commission during some of the hotter days in July, sending temperatures into the upper 80s on certain floors. That prompted officials to bring in fans, and a captain had bottled water delivered until the problem was resolved.

“It’s just inhumane for everybody,” Heard said, referencing inmates and staff. “It was literally a hothouse. We could have grown vegetables.”

Part of the challenge, aside from temperature issues, involve the range of inmates, which includes 17-year-olds — who are considered adults in Michigan but have to be separated because of federal rules against prison rape — females and people who are sick. The population, which Heard said is substantially larger than the building was designed to accommodate, strains even the elevators.

Mental health services are also provided at the Baird facility, which opened in 1984. Heard said the jail serves about 400 mental health inmates.

“We’re a jail, not a hospital,” Heard said, noting that circumstances require that the jail act in both capacities.

John Restum, department administrator for mental health at the jail, said a backlog of cases at state mental health facilities have an impact on Wayne County’s inmate population.

“Because it takes so long to get someone out of here, we end up treating them,” Restum said.

Staff members referenced one current case that was taxing resources — a 17-year-old with the maturity level of 4-year-old who had been found permanently incompetent after being charged with criminal sexual conduct. Those kinds of cases, they said, do not belong in a jail setting.

Another issue, Keith Dlugokinski, director of jail health services, noted is that many inmates in the Wayne County jails represent an underserved population, meaning they might not receive treatment for chronic conditions before coming to jail or even know that they are ill.

“The population in this jail is very sick,” Dlugokinski said.

Heard noted that some of the jails’ notorious overtime issues result from having to send inmates to hospitals in the region; officers have to transport the inmates and stay with them.

Baird also has the infirmary.

Josephine Woods, director of nursing, listed a slew of issues and equipment deficiencies — a 600-pound patient but no hoyer lift, meaning that as many as 15 staff members are needed to move the inmate; no separate infirmary for women; no hydrotherapy bath for a woman with burns on more than 40% of her body, not even a regular bathtub.

And, she said, it’s tough to keep nurses on staff under such conditions.

“We’re as antiquated as it gets,” she said.

Not as bad as others

They call it the brain of the jail, but on the last Friday in July, the master control panel at William Dickerson Detention Facility looked more like a flashing Christmas tree.

The lights simply blink.

Heard said the panel had been “jerry-rigged” years ago. Although switches used to control doors in the jail apparently were working, the lights pinpointing open-and-closed doors were not, meaning the deputies manning the panel used radios, camera views, a desk phone and their own experience to decide which doors to open for waiting inmates.

A few feet away, the facility’s fire alarm control panel was on the fritz, too.

“We’re completely offline,” Cpl. Ronald DiPaola announced as he told Heard about troubles with a service contract on the unit, which is now scheduled for replacement at a cost initially estimated around $300,000.

“It’s a huge safety problem,” said DiPaola, after walking to a nearby hallway and pulling an alarm for a test. After a brief delay, an alarm finally sounded.

In another part of the jail, Robert Dunlap, director of jail classification, noted that “we’ve got a few challenges,” explaining a couple of bins placed on the floor to collect water dripping from a pipe.

But the William Dickerson facility, which has a notable array of missing ceiling tiles, also has had some repairs in recent months. For example, jail staff showed off gleaming metal bathroom stalls in one dormitory, or pod, that were recent replacements for those that had been broken and were falling apart.

The Dickerson facility opened in 1991, and is where federal prisoners were moved in 2013 because conditions were so bad at the two downtown jails. The environment allows inmates more freedom of movement, including larger open dormitories with jail staff stationed in with the inmates, under the belief that if officers are with the inmates, the officers, not the inmates, are in control.

Staff note that there are fewer problems and less tension at Division III, which is a more modern and open facility, compared to the other jails.

In the case of one pod which the Free Press toured, the ratio was 64 male inmates to one female officer in a domestic violence unit.

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @_ericdlawrence.

Wayne Co.’s jails

■ The Andrew C. Baird Detention Facility

570 Clinton St., Detroit

Opened: 1984

Capacity: Estimated at 1,285

■The Old Wayne County Jail

525 Clinton St., Detroit

Opened: 1929

Capacity: 770 beds

■The William Dickerson Detention Facility

3501 Hamtramck Drive, Hamtramck

Opened: 1991

Capacity: 896 beds