John Monk
The State
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A top official at Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, the large Richland County, S.C. jail, has been arrested as part of a monthslong investigation into a sweeping alleged cover-up of more than 60 crimes involving inmates and guards at the jail, Sheriff Leon Lott announced Tuesday.
James Lipscomb, 66, one of two top officials at the jail, was charged with obstruction of justice and has been booked as an inmate into the same jail where he once held sway as the facility’s highest ranking managers, Lott told reporters at a press conference at his office’s headquarters on Two Notch Road.
Lipscomb was the director of compliance and safety at the jail when the crimes occurred.
Richland County officials, who run the jail, did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages.
Two incidents in early April at the jail led to the discovery that numerous crimes at the jail were being kept secret by jail officials, Lott said.
On April 7, an inmate named Keith Bagley died and was taken to the hospital, Lott said. The Richland County coroner’s office, which was late in being notified, ruled the cause of death were the toxic effects of synthetic cannabinoids, known as K2 Spice.
Since drugs aren’t allowed at the jail, the death was a crime and the inmate’s cell was a crime scene, Lott said. But the sheriff’s office — which is supposed to investigate potential crimes at the jail — was never notified.
“Lipscomb gave a directive to a jail staff member not to report the inmate death to the sheriff’s office. This directive was not only in violation of Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center policy, it was an obstruction to the death investigation and allowed for crucial evidence to be destroyed,” Lott said.
“The crime scene disappeared. We were not notified,” said Lott. “That’s obstruction.”
Another case involved the sexual assault of a female inmate in the jail, Lott said. Although the woman notified jail staff of the assault when it occurred, the sheriff’s department was not notified. The department only found out about it when the woman was released from jail and checked with sheriff’s investigators, only to find out they didn’t know about it.
The sexual assault case and the drug overdose case led sheriff’s department investigators to find out about 62 other cases involving drugs and assaults that weren’t previously turned over to the department, Lott said. The cases date back to last December.
So far, sheriff’s deputies have arrested seven jail guards and 17 inmates for committing alleged crimes with the jail, Lott said.
Investigators have been helped by law-abiding staff at the jail, Lott said.
“There are good people down there who want to do the right thing,” Lott said.
Lipscomb’s arrest was the latest in a series of events including deaths and misconduct dating back years that have underscored problems at the jail.
In March, The State newspaper disclosed that Richland County recently paid $9.8 million to settle the needless wrongful death of an inmate.
The $9.8 million total settlement underscored the dangerous conditions at Richland County’s Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, conditions written about in a January 2025 investigative report by the U.S. Department of Justice civil rights division. The report noted that conditions at the jail expose inmates to “unreasonable risk of serious harm.”
The county is spending $33 million to upgrade numerous substandard conditions at the jail, county officials told a State reporter in January 2025, just before the Justice Department’s report was published.
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