Tag: jail staffing

Toilet Troubles at Kent Jail, Councilmember Invites Landlord Who’s Suing City to Lead “Housing Provider” Panel

1. Update: DAJD spokesman Noah Haglund says workers were able to adjust the flush limits in the double-bunked unit and people in that unit “remained in place. The toilets can now be flushed several times per minute.”

Earlier this month, as PubliCola exclusively reported, the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention relocated 50 people from the downtown Seattle jail to the Maleng Regional Justice Center (MRJC) in Kent, part of a larger effort to reduce the downtown jail population. The minimum-security inmates are being “double-bunked” in cells that were previously occupied by one person each, with one guard overseeing just over 100 jail residents.

But an unanticipated problem has already swirled to the surface at the MRJC: The toilets, which sit out in the open, are programmed to only flush twice an hour, meaning anything that’s in the toilet after those two flushes has to stay in the toilet until the timer resets. The newly doubled-up jail residents are already complaining about the unsanitary situation in their tight living quarters, according to representatives for the unions that represent jail guards and public defenders.

“Imagine two people being in there—you’ve used your two flushes, and now you have to go to the bathroom, and whatever you do, it has to sit there for an hour. It’s not too pleasant for the two people who have to sit there in that small cell,” said Dennis Folk, head of the King County Corrections Guild. The regulated toilets also eliminate the option of a “courtesy flush,” which can reduce the nastiness of living and sleeping in the same room as your toilet.

DAJD spokesman Noah Haglund said the toilets in some MRJC cells have “flush meter limitations” because of a history of people flooding the cells or deliberately clogging the toilets. “Since the unit in question has not been double-bunked since prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not initially flagged as a concern when the area was repopulated for double-bunked status,” Haglund said Friday, adding that the department would move people to another unit if they couldn’t figure out how to “reconfigure the toilets.”

The commotion over commodes isn’t the only issue with double-bunking people at the MRJC, however. The DAJD has struggled to hire and retain jail guards throughout the system, and the ACLU recently sued the county over conditions at the downtown jail, arguing that the department has violated an agreement from the 1990s known as the Hammer settlement.

Folk says the jail guards’ union has filed a demand to bargain over the decision to move 50 people to the RJC, noting that the 1:104 ratio of guards to inmates is far below the usual “direct supervision” standard of one guard for every residents. Haglund told PubliCola previously that although 1:104 isn’t ideal, the unit will be safe with just one guard because no more than 64 people will be out in the unit’s common area at one time. Folk disagrees, telling PubliCola, “The staffing ratio for this is just not safe.”

2. On Wednesday, City Councilmember Sara Nelson invited a panel of “housing providers”—landlords—to give a presentation in her economic development committee about the hardships they’ve faced as the result of Seattle’s tenant protection laws, including eviction moratoriums, notice requirements for rent increases, and the “fair chance housing” law, which bars landlords from denying people housing based on their criminal history.

The discussion was like a bizarro-world version of Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s frequent panels on renters’ rights, where, instead of tenants describing unfair evictions, landlords complained about nightmare tenants who were almost impossible to get rid of. Nelson is more aligned with landlords than tenants, so it’s not surprising she would push a counternarrative and highlight landlords’ concerns.

But the leader of the panel, MariLyn Yim, was still an unusual choice to lead a city-sponsored panel, because she has sued the city repeatedly, including one lawsuit that is still ongoing, in an effort to roll back tenant protections.

In their first lawsuit, which was unsuccessful, Yim and her husband, Chong Yim, challenged the city’s “first in time” rule, which attempts to reduce discrimination against tenants by requiring landlords to rent to the first tenant who meets basic qualifications.

In the second, they argue that the city’s law barring landlords from asking about prospective tenants’ criminal history (and deciding whether to rent to someone based on that history) violates their constitutional due-process and free-speech rights. “The Yim family could not afford to live in Seattle without the rental income from these properties,” the lawsuit says.

Yim said during her presentation that an “explosion” of new tenant protections has been driving small, “mom and pop” landlords out of the rental market. “I think families are really going to have a tough time as we lose the smaller rentals and there’s also a shift in ownership profile.

Just this week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled partly in favor of the Yims and their co-defendants, agreeing that the city has no authority to prohibit landlords from asking about a prospective tenant’s criminal history.

Yim said during her presentation that an “explosion” of new tenant protections has been driving small, “mom and pop” landlords out of the rental market, pointing to Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) data showing a “loss” of 11,000 housing units at buildings with fewer than 20 apartments. “I think families are really going to have a tough time as we lose the smaller rentals and there’s also a shift in ownership profile. There’s a lot of those larger properties that are less likely to be owned by local investors or members of the community,” Yim said.

However, that data actually refers to the number of units landlords have registered at the city; according to the report that was the source for Yim’s numbers, registrations with the city could have declined for a number of reasons, including relaxed enforcement by SDCI or the fact that “some landlords neglected or declined to renew their registrations during the pandemic.”

In addition to being a landlord and plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit against the city, Yim is also a city of Seattle employee, earning $140,000 a year as a civil engineer for the Seattle Department of Transportation.

King County Plans to Move Up to 150 Inmates to Address Capacity Issues at Downtown Jail

By Erica C. Barnett

Earlier this year, King County Executive Dow Constantine quietly added $3.5 million to the county’s budget for “potential contracted services to address jail capacity issues”—a reference to understaffing at the King County Correctional Facility in downtown Seattle, which is currently facing a shortage of about 120 officers. Despite offering bonuses of up to $15,000, the county Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (DAJD) has found it challenging to hire and retain jail guards, thanks in large part to long shifts and poor working conditions; the more guards leave, the worse the problem becomes.

Last month, DAJD director Allen Nance provided more details about what that $3.5 million would pay for. In a memo to all DAJD staff, Nance explained that the department is “pursuing a contract with the South Correctional Entity (SCORE),” a misdemeanor jail in Des Moines, to house some of the 1,250 or so people currently incarcerated at the downtown Seattle jail. SCORE is a public development authority, a type of government-funded nonprofit, that was established to provide jail services to seven South King County cities. The department plans to start in January by moving about 50 people to the jail about 15 miles south of Seattle, a number that could grow to 150 later on. SCORE, which provides jail services for six south King County cities, has a capacity of 802.

“The partnership with SCORE is being piloted to see if it might ease the workload on our staff and prevent a need to expand booking at the [Maleng Regional Justice Center (RJC) in Kent], given the Department’s limited resources and our current reliance on overtime to cover shifts,” Nance continued. About 260 people are currently incarcerated at the RJC, which is only accepting bookings by appointment. “At the same time, we will continue to explore other strategies to run our two jails more efficiently.”

Noah Haglund, a spokesman for DAJD, said that “if we finalize an agreement with SCORE, we would prioritize people with extended time between court dates or those who are serving jail sentences.” King County’s jails would “continue to house people with greater medical needs and those deemed to pose a higher security risk,” he said.

Most of those housed in the downtown jail face felony charges; about 9 percent have been charged with misdemeanors. Although SCORE is currently a misdemeanor jail, its director, Devon Schrum, said the facility is “constructed and staffed to hold any classification of arrestee, including those accused of felony-level offenses.”

Defense attorneys and the jail guards’ union—odd bedfellows that have increasingly found themselves on the same side of issues related to crowding and understaffing at the jail—oppose the move. “We’re already facing a staffing crisis,” said Dennis Folk, head of the King County Corrections Guild. “Let’s say we’re housing 50 or 100 inmates down there, and now they need to go to the hospital—who’s going to be responsible for taking them? How are they supposed to get to the court if that work falls back on us?”

Haglund said the department has not worked out an agreement with SCORE to transport residents from Des Moines to Seattle; according to a rate sheet provided by Schrum, the jail charges $75 an hour for transportation by an officer.

The union that represents King County Department of Public Defense employees, SEIU 925, has similar concerns. Molly Gilbert, the the president of the SEIU 925 chapter that represents DPD staffers, said SCORE’s location and hours of operation could make it hard for attorneys to meet with clients and for clients to get to the downtown Seattle courthouse for in-person hearings. Bonnie Linville, an attorney with Columbia Legal Services,

In a recent survey of public defenders, many attorneys said moving downtown jail inmates to SCORE would make it more challenging for them to manage their caseloads, because they would have to drive between three jails instead of two; others, however, said SCORE has more reliable video visitation than either King County jail. The union has filed a demand to bargain over the change—the first time the union has ever moved to challenge a management decision through bargaining outside the regular contract negotiation process, Gilbert said.

Schrum says SCORE —unlike the King County system—is fully staffed and has had little trouble recruiting “highly trained” guards and staff. But some who oppose relocating inmates point to previous evidence of poor conditions at the jail, including a highly publicized 2018 case in which a woman experiencing a mental health crisis died in her cell later spending four days consuming huge amounts of water.

In 2016, Disability Rights Washington’s AVID (Amplifying Voices of Inmates with Disabilities) Jail Project released a report outlining significant problems with SCORE’s treatment of inmates with mental illness, including excessive use of solitary confinement and lack of access to psychiatric care. The report also outlined steps SCORE had taken to address some of the issues AVID raised; a spokesman for DRW said he could not speak to current conditions in the jail.

Many advocates say relocating 50 (or even 150) people from the downtown jail to SCORE will do little to address deteriorating conditions in the jail. For months, people in the jail have limited access to medical care, showers, laundry, and recreation outside their cells.

“There are requirements that people be provided adequate medical and mental health care, be taken to outside medical appointments and be allowed a certain amount of out of cell time per day and it is clear that the jail is not meeting those requirements. Pursuant to the Hammer settlement agreement, the jail is required to meet certain benchmarks regarding each of these issues.”—La Rond Baker, legal director, ACLU of Washington

“We’re hearing routinely from folks that they’re sending [requests for physical or mental health care] that aren’t getting answered, or the answer is, ‘sorry, we’re understaffed,'” said Bonnie Linville, an attorney for Columbia Legal Services, which provides legal aid to low-income clients. “We’re also hearing about fewer transfers and delays in transferring people to Harborview [Medical Center] for necessary care, which is really concerning.” Suicide has become such a problem in the jail that the department has removed bedsheets from all cells. The county’s 2023-2024 budget includes $1 million for “jump protection panels” at the jail.

With conditions inside the jail at a breaking point, advocates say the county may be in violation of an agreement it signed almost 25 years ago called the Hammer settlement. In 1988, the ACLU of Washington represented a man named Calvin Hammer who said he was denied medical care after an assault at the jail left him with a badly fractured skull. Eventually, the ACLU and King County reached a settlement that required the county to increase staffing and improve conditions at the downtown jail. Now, the ACLU believes the county may be in violation of the Hammer settlement, and could challenge the county’s compliance with the agreement.

La Rond Baker, the legal director for the ACLU-WA, declined to get into the details of any potential legal challenge. However, she said, “many of the conditions at the jail show that the jail is out of compliance with the Hammer settlement.” For example, “there are requirements that people be provided adequate medical and mental health care, be taken to outside medical appointments and be allowed a certain amount of out of cell time per day and it is clear that the jail is not meeting those requirements. … Pursuant to the Hammer settlement agreement, the jail is required to meet certain benchmarks regarding each of these issues.”

Continue reading “King County Plans to Move Up to 150 Inmates to Address Capacity Issues at Downtown Jail”

Parents Won’t Have to to Pay Jail Costs for Incarcerated Children; Another Suicide at Downtown Jail Amid Ongoing Staff Shortage

1. Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation on Thursday ending the requirement that parents of children in state-run juvenile detention centers pay for a portion of the cost of their child’s incarceration, a practice known as “parent pay.” The new law will also clear the debts of the roughly 240 families who collectively owed $1.1 million in unpaid custody fees to the state’s Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), which runs Washington’s three juvenile detention facilities. 

DCYF’s 2020-2021 budget assumed that the agency would take in $1.9 million in parent pay revenue over the past two years; Rachel Sottile, the president of the Center for Children and Youth Justice, a children’s rights organization in Seattle, told PubliCola that the agency was able to collect less than a quarter of that figure.

“First of all, DCYF can’t do if its job if it doesn’t have the resources it needs,” she said, “and secondly, parent pay created financial instability for parents that left a lot of youth cycling back into the criminal justice system.” She added that parents who did not pay their debts to DCYF risked facing contempt charges and possible jail time.

In a press release, DCYF Secretary Ross Hunter said he supported eliminating parent pay, calling the practice financially impractical and counterproductive. “It probably costs more to collect [fees from parents] than we bring in and may make it less likely for youth to reunify with their families, destabilizing their transition back to the community,” he said.

Along similar lines, the legislature voted this month to allow judges to waive most of the fines and restitution fees imposed on people convicted of crimes; that bill applies retroactively, opening the door for thousands of people who are currently in prison or who previously spent time in prison to petition courts to relieve them of debts that can present a hurdle to successful re-entry.

2. A 25-year-old man died at Harborview Medical Center after hanging himself in a cell at the King County Correctional Facility in downtown Seattle last week, marking the third death at the jail since the beginning of the year: an unusually high number for this point in the year, especially given the decline in the jail’s population during the pandemic. The deaths come as the county’s Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention continues to lose more corrections officers than it can hire, leaving some officers and other jail staff stretched thin.

Jail staff transferred the man to Harborview Medical Center after a guard found him unresponsive in a cell on March 10; he died from his injuries four days later. Court records indicate he was a trans man; the King County Superior Court referred to him using the last name Kostelak, and according to a source, he may have used the name Damian. Continue reading “Parents Won’t Have to to Pay Jail Costs for Incarcerated Children; Another Suicide at Downtown Jail Amid Ongoing Staff Shortage”