By Matt Sledge
The Advocate
NEW ORLEANS — Despite a leadership shakeup earlier this year, the New Orleans jail remains mired in violence and staffing shortages so severe that entire units sometimes go unguarded, federal monitors said in a report Wednesday.
In language that echoes years of previous downbeat reports, the monitors appointed by U.S. District Judge Lance Africk said the jail “is not safe for inmates or staff,” with “unacceptable” levels of violence.
Africk praised temporary jail leader Darnley Hodge Sr. at a court hearing in June, stating that Hodge had presided over a “culture change” at the city’s lock-up. Yet as the latest report makes clear, Hodge has his work cut out for him if he is chosen as the permanent administrator.
Inmates have suffered broken bones and puncture wounds in fights, suicide training remains lax despite a spate of deaths last year, and prisoners were discovered with homemade “brew” behind a clothes dryer in June, among other revelations in the latest report.
The monitors said that with so little progress five years after a June 2013 reform agreement, called a consent judgment, was reached with the U.S. government and attorneys for the inmates, the jail must rethink its operations from scratch.
“Improvements have been made during that time, but vital, urgent work is required to comply with the provisions of the consent judgment in order to bring and sustain the (Sheriff’s Office) facilities and operations in line with constitutional standards,” the monitors said. “Currently, the environment is not safe for inmates or staff.”
The report comes at a critical time for Hodge, who is seeking to become the permanent jail administrator.
Africk appointed Hodge to lead the jail on a temporary basis in January, after previous administrator Gary Maynard resigned following a harsh report from the monitors.
Maynard had been tapped to lead the jail as a result of a 2016 agreement among the parties to the consent judgment that stripped Sheriff Marlin Gusman of most of his powers.
Applications for the permanent position of jail compliance director, which will pay between $150,000 and $200,000, were accepted from June to July.
Hodge confirmed that he threw his hat in the ring a few days before the deadline. Top command staff members urged him to continue leading the jail in a letter, he said.
It is not clear who else applied for the job.
Under the terms of the 2016 agreement that created the compliance director position, the U.S. Justice Department, inmate advocates and the City of New Orleans will submit a slate of three candidates to Gusman. Africk must then approve the sheriff’s pick.
Emily Washington, an attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans, said interviews are ongoing. No candidates have yet been submitted to Gusman for his selection, she said.
The monitors expressed praise for Hodge, a former jail administrator in Virginia. They said he “brings substantial knowledge of jail operations and has worked to gain compliance with the consent judgment.”
However, while the monitors say the jail has improved “marginally” since their last report in January, their assessment of the overall situation there again sounded bleak.
The available data suggest that the already understaffed jail lost 102 staffers compared with 57 new hires in the first half of 2018. Yet the monitors cautioned that they have not been able to verify those numbers.
The report says that since January, the Sheriff’s Office has reported 44 suicide attempts or “ideations,” 270 inmate-on-inmate attacks and 139 inmate injuries — but it also warned against trusting those numbers.
The monitors said it would be pointless to try to calculate month-to-month rates of violence within the jail complex because deputies are so bad at recording incidents.
“Computation of rates is not included here as the reliability of the data is in question, and establishing rates contributes to more misunderstanding rather than to problem-solving,” they said.
Still, the monitors said, “No matter the data used to review violence-related trends, none is (sustainably) downward.”
Washington said the report makes it clear yet again that something must change at the jail.
“Every day that the Sheriff’s Office remains out of compliance with the consent judgment, real ongoing harm is happening to the members of our community held in the jail,” she said.