Getting to the Truth About the Jail | Eastern North Carolina Now

    There is enough political spin about the jail to create two or three tornadoes. Political spin is a polite way of shading the truth to support a certain point of view. A lot of what has been presented to the public is simply not true. There is a much stronger three letter word for this kind of behavior. The Jail Committee has been unwilling to contend with the work of examining alternatives. When faced with alternatives both Sheriff Jordan and Jerry Langley start pulling stunts. Sheriff Jordan quickly goes into a shouting match and Jerry Langley tries to use his capacity as Chairman of the Jail Committee to tell me no one wants to listen to what I have to say. Mr. Langley self-appointed himself chairman of the Jail Committee to try to control the outcome.

    Langley, when faced at the Commissioners retreat with the fact the jail could be built behind the Courthouse, suddenly announced that he had the votes to move the jail and called for the unscheduled vote. He simply did not want to hear the facts and he was afraid for others to hear all of the options.
Click the image to expand to a large picture of Commissioner Richardson's proposed facility location and layout: Above.
    The Sheriff appeared at the City Council meeting on February 25th and while he sounded good he warped the truth to fit what he wanted. The article about the Council meeting presented in the Washington Daily News was similar to what happened but sounded like the Council was in agreement to move the jail, just not to the Industrial Park unless they were consulted. Nothing was said by the WDN about the Mayor calling for a public hearing about the location of the jail. Public hearings by both the City and County are needed to get at the truth. Beaufort County public officials are on the road to the same kind of bad decisions they have made in the past.

    In a nutshell, a jail can be built behind the court house that will satisfy the needs of Beaufort County at a cost that is about the same as the proposal to build it in the industrial park. This jail would be two stories high with parking on the ground floor level. This new jail will not be in the flood plain, it will be ten feet above the ground. We will not have to hire five or six new deputies and purchase vehicles to transport prisoners. There is enough space to expand in the future to house four hundred inmates in a two story jail or 800 in a four story jail.

    The plans presented by the Architects are both incomplete and flawed. They are incomplete because Chairman Langley and the Jail Committee did not allow or request the Architect to examine all alternatives. A study has never been done to determine the operating costs of any of the proposals presented by the Architects much less the proposals Chairman Langley refused to hear. Annual operating costs can be a killer, ask Hyde County. They built a new jail with grant (no cost to them) money and then discovered they could not afford the cost of operations. That jail now houses county offices.

    One flaw in the Architect's plans is the building of an additional 75 beds so the County could rent 50 beds to house Federal prisoners and 25 beds to take prisoners from the State and/or other counties. Proposing to do that at this time is extremely risky considering the number jails constructed in eastern North Carolina during the past ten years. Pitt County has more than 100 vacant beds. Beaufort County never did a study to determine whether the Federal Government, the State or any other county would give us prisoners. After deducting the 75 bogus beds we only need to build a jail for a maximum of 213 inmates. That jail would be good for 30 years. After examining the space and the supervision of prisoner requirements the Architects recommended compartments that house 96 prisoners as being the most economical. Compartmentalization allows for future expansion, when the need is there and reduces the amount that is needed to be financed now. We only need to build two compartments now. That doubles the size of the present jail. The proposed core infrastructure would also be reduced in size. Core infrastructure includes such things as kitchens, storage and laundry facilities.

    In order to run up the 33 million dollar price tag, and make the jail behind the court house look more expensive than the one in the industrial park, the proposal was for a four story building with a five million dollar concrete parking deck. Building a two story jail with parking at ground level and providing for the possible future expansion of a third compartment of 96 beds should cost no more than 20 million dollars to build behind the court house. That third compartment after 30 years would probably give us another 30 years at the downtown site unless we have a major increase in population.

    Now we come to the no action alternative. Do we need to build a jail at all? Everyone talks about it but no one can present proof other than "overcrowding and a dangerous jail." All jails are inherently dangerous. Many of the same risks as to jailer safety will be present in the new jail as are present in the old jail. We need to assess the actual risks, what causes them and what the best remedy is. If a prisoner wants to get to a jailer and do harm he will almost always be successful whether the jail is old or new. We've seen no evidence of what the dangers actually are in the current jail. Have there been incidents? What caused them? What could have been done to prevent them? We've not even looked at those kinds of questions.

    Let us look at this from the stand point of making a business decision. If we reduced the number of inmates in the jail it would become safer, the over crowding problem would go away. If we take out enough inmates the current jail would be as safe for the jailers as a new facility. We know our average number of inmates is 77. I believe the jail would be safe if we had a daily average of 57 inmates. Pitt County , 22 miles away, would be willing to take 20 prisoners at an estimated cost of about 60 dollars per day per prisoner. That comes to $438,000 dollars per year. If we were to borrow 20 million dollars at 4 percent interest, we would pay $800,000 dollars per year in interest, to say nothing of another $1,000,000 in principal. Is this a hard business decision to make or what? By spending $438,000 we can avoid spending $1,362,000. So you decide. Do we need to build a jail at all to solve the current problem? We just need some better management on the part of county commissioners.

    There is another way to save jail money. The District Attorney is taking his sweet time in trying cases. The judges do not make the decision on when a case is called for trial. That is entirely the District Attorney's decision. Our District Attorney has several prisoners who have been in jail more than two years. This makes me believe all other prisoners are held longer than is necessary. Maybe we need some legislation mandating a speedy trial. The Constitution mandates a speedy trial. Just speeding up trials should give us a potentially 20 percent reduction in prisoners. That means our average count should be about 62 prisoners. We are getting closer to that magic safe number of 52 prisoners. Maybe we should look at pretrial release and more ankle bracelets. There are companies who analyze the efficiency of jail operations and guide counties toward how to reduce jail populations. That is another alternative that has not been pursued by the Jail Committee.

    The simple truth in all of this is our public officials are not doing a good job in trying cases, overseeing the use of the jail and examining alternatives. We are getting ready to do a rerun of the wasted money spent on the schools, the US 17 Bypass, the hospital and economic development. And one final thought. Why don't we advertise for competing proposals to solve this problem? Competition might just produce some ideas we have not thought about...and make it more difficult for some people to control the options.