Pickens jail overcrowding creates safety threat

Significant overcrowding at the Pickens County jail is leading to increased violence and strained resources and is limiting the ability of the Sheriff's Office to do its job.

The facility is rated by the state Department of Corrections to house 93. Added beds have bumped the capacity to 123.

On a recent day, the prisoner count was 226.

"We have mats on the floor, just anywhere we can squeeze in somebody," Sheriff Rick Clark said.

The lack of space means the Sheriff's Office has to carefully consider how many arrests deputies can make and when.

Though Clark said day-to-day law enforcement operations haven't been affected, the ability to conduct larger operations, such as the one that netted 16 on drug charges in April, is hampered by the space issue.

"We want to up the game and target the criminals more, and we're hampered by that right now," Clark said. "It places a strain on us to not have a physical place to put a lot of them."

The Pickens County jail holds prisoners who are awaiting trial or who have been sentenced to serve fewer than 90 days. Clark said the vast majority of his inmates fall into the former category. That can include those facing everything from drug charges, a large and growing group, to larceny and violent crimes.

Jail administrator Capt. Keith Galloway said a recent count showed 18 prisoners charged with murder or attempted murder in the jail.

The problem of crowding has been growing in the last five years, and the jail's average daily population has been above 200 for more than a year now, Galloway said.

He and Clark said the major contributor is the growth of methamphetamine use across the county.

The biggest threat posed by the crowded conditions is violence, officials said.

There are daily incidents, ranging from verbal altercations to physical scuffles, Galloway said. On occasion, the staff of six detention officers has been assisted by Galloway, road patrol deputies, even the sheriff himself to break up clashes.

Officers have been assaulted, and one prisoner ended up with a broken jaw.

"The safety of my officers is the No. 1 concern," Clark said.

One block of cells that's supposed to hold 10 prisoners is housing 20, with men spending their days on mats rolled out on and under tables and on floors of cells. Inmates are either lying on mats or standing nearly shoulder to shoulder in the limited space.

"Would you want to go in there and break up a fight?" Galloway asked. "It's scary."

"When you have more inmates than a cell was designed to hold, tempers can flare. It's just a very potentially volatile situation," said Cassie Walls, a criminal justice instructor with Greenville Technical College.

Excess population also puts a strain on jail and Sheriff's Office resources.

The Department of Corrections' rating of 93 prisoners for the Pickens County jail takes into account not only the number of beds but also the capability of infrastructure like kitchens and bathrooms to support the population.

"We're dealing with a failing infrastructure here," Galloway said, pointing to a spot in the floor where collapsed plumbing was recently replaced, a situation that required he move a group of prisoners to another county's jail while repairs were made in the cell block.

There's no relief valve for the situation, he said, nowhere to send the overflow population.

"To resolve the issue and to resolve the issue for future purposes, I think now's the time to act on a new jail," he said. "We are at a point where we have got to have a plan for the future."

Chief Deputy Creed Hashe said deputies often plan to serve outstanding warrants around times when court is in session. Court appearances tend to free up space as inmates are either released or handed over to the Department of Corrections to serve their sentences.

"There's a lot of strategy that has to go in place," he said.

Walls said overcrowding can also lead to legal issues, such the 2011 Brown v. Plata U.S. Supreme Court decision, which held that overcrowding in California's prisons led to negligent prisoner care, a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring cruel and unusual punishment.

Galloway said the jail has faced and successfully defended six lawsuits in the past two years.

Clark has asked that the National Institute of Corrections, a division of the Department of Justice, conduct an assessment of the county jail.

The assessment is free to the county and will look not only at the jail facility but also potential contributing factors, such as the state of the Solicitor's Office and where inmates are coming from.

"I think at some point we're going to have to address the actual facilities we have," Clark said. "We want to have a whole scope of where we're at and where we need to go."

The study will also include a community meeting regarding the findings, and Clark said he hopes to have community involvement in every step of the process.

Clark said he'll wait for a new county administrator to be hired to replace the retired Chappell Hurst before proceeding with the study.