By ANDRIA SIMMONS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA, Ga. — Carl Sims knows what can happen when the Gwinnett County Detention Center gets crowded.
Inmates who are triple-bunked in a tiny cell for 20 hours a day tend to get on each others’ nerves, like kids trapped in the back seat on a long car trip. The added stress increases the potential for fights.
“Tensions rise when you have to share resources,” said Sims, a major with the sheriff’s department who supervises the jail and the department’s Rapid Response Team.
Resources are increasingly scarce at the Gwinnett jail.
An average of 2,600 inmates share an area designed to house 2,174, forcing some inmates to sleep on mattresses on the floor, Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway said. The jail held 2,707 inmates on Friday, meaning 533 didn’t have beds.
Two years ago, the county opened a new jail tower that added 1,440 beds. That was supposed to alleviate overcrowding for years to come. But inmate population has already hit the numbers expected in 2010. A second planned expansion is at least seven years away.
With the average daily inmate population growing by 180 each year, space is once again becoming limited at the jail. It’s up to deputies to manage the burgeoning inmate population.
Walking through the yawning beige corridors of the Gwinnett County Detention Center one day last week, Sims’ appearance is crisp and his manner authoritative. He warns a mouthy inmate making catcalls from his cell to quiet down.
Being a jailer becomes increasingly dangerous and stressful as the number of inmates rises, according to Sims. Deputies are constantly shuffling inmates between showers, attorney visits, medical appointments and recreation time.
“At the end of the day, you want to pull your hair out,” Sims said.
Gwinnett is not the only county in Georgia with an overcrowded jail.
Last month, 36 of the state’s 146 county jails were over capacity, according to a state Department of Community Affairs report. (Thirteen of Georgia’s 159 counties do not have jails.)
The report is based on information collected on a single day. Last month, that day was May 1, when Georgia jails averaged 92 percent occupancy.
Several factors contribute to overcrowding --- some of which are already being addressed.
For one thing, the jail has space it’s not using.
Eight housing units that could hold 540 inmates sit empty simply because there aren’t enough deputies to staff them.
Conway says he hopes to have enough deputies hired and trained to open them by the end of summer.
But even when those units open, the jail will be at or over capacity.
The jail is supposed to hold people awaiting trial in the Gwinnett court system. When they’re convicted and sentenced to serve time, they’re supposed to go down the street to the Gwinnett Comprehensive Correctional Complex.
But on Friday, 163 county-sentenced inmates were stuck in the jail waiting for a bed to open up at the GCCC.
Gwinnett holds two separate contracts with the state corrections department to house 254 state inmates in the 512-bed GCCC. The state pays $20 a day for each inmate, though it costs about $50 per inmate each day to house them, Conway said.
“I’ve been complaining about this for years,” Conway said. “It’s been a problem even before the new GCCC opened in 2002.”
Jeff Sligar, the deputy warden at GCCC, points out that much of the remaining cost of housing state inmates is offset by free labor that they provide. The inmates are put to work cleaning and maintaining county-owned properties and staffing the county recycling center.
County commissioners could decide not to renew one of the state contracts this year, which would rid the facility of 126 state inmates, Conway said.
County Administrator Jock Connell said he will be meeting with someone from the state Department of Corrections this week to discuss the contract.
“Our future direction and action steps will be based on getting some clarification on several contract issues,” Connell said. “I think it is critically important that we have the complete information in front of us before we make our decisions.”
Conway says the problem needs to be addressed soon, because it’s standing in the way of the county’s participation in a federal program to turn over illegal immigrants arrested in Gwinnett to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. Commissioners voted this year to start participating the program, called 287(g), and the sheriff’s department hopes to begin implementing it by October.
However, federal guidelines for participating in the program mandate that no inmates can be sleeping on the floor. If Conway can’t get the extra beds by then, he’ll have to start shipping inmates off to jails in other counties, which costs from $45 to $60 per inmate, per day.
No one knows for certain whether the county’s decision to begin participating in the federal program will help or hurt the inmate population.
“I think it will cause a rise in our population initially,” Conway said.
There are currently about 769 foreign-born inmates at the jail. Conway estimates more than 60 percent of them are in the country illegally. Under normal circumstances, many inmates are able to bond out of jail within a few days. However, inmates who are subject to deportation under the new program may have to wait four or five days for an ICE agent to pick them up, Conway said.
The program is designed to reduce the likelihood that the inmates will be arrested again once they are deported. County officials hope the program will save money and bed spaces in the long run, Connell said.
However, the problem of jail overcrowding is not likely to go away anytime soon, as long as Gwinnett’s population growth continues unabated.
“I’d just as soon go out of business tomorrow,” Sligar said. “Unfortunately, with society the way it is, I don’t see that happening.”
BEDS AND HEADS
2,707
Jail inmate population as of Friday
2,174
Inmates the open portion of the jail is designed to house
512
Beds in the Gwinnett Comprehensive Correctional Complex*
254
Inmates at GCCC under state contract
163
Jail inmates awaiting transfer to GCCC as of Friday
*Not including 288 beds designated for the work release program
Copyright 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution