Publications: Exploring Jail Operations

Why a Book About Jails?

Most citizens have a confused idea about jails due in part to the Nation's press (which frequently uses the words jails and prisons interchangeably) and the fact that most people have never been inside a jail. Even in colleges and universities, with few exceptions, those who teach criminal justice and criminology courses are more apt to focus on prisons than jails.

Jails in the criminal justice hierarchy stand at the bottom as the stepchild of the system. Most new stories about jails concentrate on the negatives, i.e. recent escapes, poor food, riots, assaults, deteriorating physical plants, contraband smuggling, inmate/staff corruption, crowding, and the omnipresent lawsuits against the facilities.

This mass of humanity moving in and out of jails presents problems of a different nature and magnitude, especially at the time of booking the prisoners into the jail, than those found in prisons-particularly in the areas of suicide, mental illness, and medical procedures.

EXPLORING JAIL OPERATIONS

Kenneth E. Kerle

INTRODUCTION

• Part I Into the World of Corrections
• Part II Politics and Jails--Traveling is a Broadening Experience

CHAPTER 1 JAIL HISTORY: A SHORT VERSION

• B.C. Criminal Justice
• Early Jails
• The Beginning of Debtors Incarceration
• Breakup of the Feudal System
• Jails and Punishment in Colonial America
• The U.S. Jails in the Eighteenth Century
• Nineteenth Century Jails
• Twentieth Century Jails
• Jails in the Twenty-First Century
• U.S. Jail Growth and Rated Capacities

CHAPTER 2 SUICIDE AND PERSONS WITH MENTAL ILLNESS

• Jail Suicide
• Increased Interest in Jail Suicide
• Assessment of Suicide Risk
• The Mentally Disturbed: A Related Jail Problem
• Women Prisoners in Jail and Mental Health
• TAMAR Project
• Jail Treatment and Growing Numbers
• Who's at Fault-Recommendations
• NSA
• Slow but Limited Success
• Small Jails and Mental Health
• The Future

CHAPTER 3 SMALL JAILS, REGIONAL JAILS, STATE JAIL SYSTEMS

• How Many are There?
• Constant Supervision Equals Proper Staffing
• Differences in Jail Administrator Attitudes in Large Jails and Small Jails
• Regionalization of Jails: Kentucky
• Regional Jails in the Midwest, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, and Other States
• Regionalizing Small Jails
• State Jail/ Prison Systems
• Pay Parity for Jail Officers: A Problem for Small Jails

CHAPTER 4 WOMEN IN JAIL WORK AND WOMEN INMATES

• The Need for Trained Female Staff
• Restrictions on Female Staff: Forms of Past Discrimination
• Women Inmates and their Numbers
• Jail Classification for Women
• Programs for Women
• Careers in Jail for Women
• Women Who Work for Nothing--A Dying Concept
• The Female Dispatcher/Jail Supervisor
• Less Money for the Same Work--Another Antiquated Idea
• Women and the Podular Direct Supervision Jail
• How Women Officers Can React to Inmates and Staff
• Hispanic Female Officers
• Sexual Harassment
• The Wrong Women

CHAPTER 5 JAIL AUDITS, POLICIES, AND PROCEDURES: STIRRING UP MUCK FOR A PURPOSE

• Written Guidelines and Jail Policy
• Audit Procedures--the First Audit
• The Federal Presence
• Unhappy Marshals
• Security-Control Room
• Sallyports
• Breaking into Jails
• Inmates and Control of the Jails
• The Need to Monitor Jails

CHAPTER 6 TRAINING: PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

• Early Jail Training
• Increased Interest in Training and Jail Litigation
• Jail Officer's Training Manual-1980s
• Cost of Jail Training
• Jail Training in West Virginia
• Training for Small Jails
• Bill Bain's Jail Training and Kentucky's Training Evolution
• Kansas and Jail Training
• The California Model
• Urban Jail Training
• Philadelphia Prison System
• Police Lockups, Jails, Suicides, and Impulse Control
• Training and the Jail Culture
• State Jail Associations
• American Jail Association and Training

CHAPTER 7 CROWDING

• The Addiction to Locking People Up
• Understanding Crowding
• Dealing with Jail Crowding
• Cheaper Punishment Options to Relieve Jail Crowding
• Jail Population Management Committees
• The Population Release Matrix System
• The Growth of Punitive Sentencing
• Ending Jail Time
• Holding State Inmates
• Making Money Holding Inmates
• Operating a Crowded Jail
• The Stress Factor on Staff and Inmates

CHAPTER 8 INSPECTIONS

• NSA Guidelines, Accreditation, Difference from State Standards
• State Standards: Development and Problems
• NIC Jail Inspection Survey
• A Statistically Based Jail Inspection Program

CHAPTER 9 JAILS: THE MEDICAL APPROACH

• The Privatization of Jail Medical Programs
• The National Commission on Correctional Health Care
• Serious Health Issues Confronting Jails Today
• Inmate Health Care Education and Health Fairs
• Inmate Illness and Treatment
• Payment by Inmates for Health Care Services
• SARS

CHAPTER 10 PROGRAMS

• Increase in Jail Program by 1999
• Drug and Alcohol Treatment
• DWI, DUI, OUI
• Jail Industries
• Education
• Education Programs for Jail Staff
• Other Programs

CHAPTER 11 TECHNOLOGY

• Jail Construction, Design, New Technology, Integrating the System
• Modular Jails and Tents
• The Mockup Jail
• Closed-Circuit Television in Jails and Courts
• Video Visitation
• Telemedicine
• Solar Energy
• Robotics
• Computers
• Inmates and Automation
• CORMIS
• Computers and Small Jails
• Computerized Training
• Technology and the Future

CHAPTER 12 CULTURAL DIVERSITY

• Race, Statistics, Foreigners, and Criminal Justice
• Training
• Language Training
• Indian Jail in the United States
• Hispanics
• Bilingual Jail Staff
• Multicultural Discord
• Gangs--Their Multicultural Propensity
• Recruiting Representative Jail Staff
• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Screening

CHAPTER 13 LEGAL ISSUES

• Why Jails Get Sued
• Numbers of Lawsuits and Who's Doing the Suing
• Jails Often Worse Than Prisons
• Impact of Lawsuits
• Number of Jail Jurisdictions Under Court Order or Consent Degree
• Legal Issues Training
• Consent Decrees
• Cooperating with the Opposition: The L.A. County Jail Approach
• Restraints, Positional Asphyxia, and Avoiding Suicide Litigation
• Counties and Court Litigation
• Who Wins and Who Loses?
• Congressional Activity
• Arresting and Jail Minor Offenders

   

CHAPTER 14 DIRECT SUPERVISION MANAGEMENT

• Direct Supervision: Its Definition
• Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center and Direct Supervision
• Podular Direct Supervision
• The Philosophical Principles of Direct Supervision
• Pod Management Challenges
• Hiring the Right People
• Research and Direct Supervision
• Direct Supervision: Where Is It Today?

CHAPTER 15 JUVENILES

• Some Definitions
• OJJDP
• Children in Jail
• Juvenile Lawsuits
• Juveniles Held Juvenile Facilities
• Juveniles and Violence
• Recent Trends
• Types of Changes in Laws
• Getting the Status Offenders Out of Jails
• State Approaches to Locking Up Juveniles
• Getting Juveniles Out of Kansas Jails
• Orange County Corrections Department Juvenile Residential Secure School
• Special Education Programs for Juveniles in Virginia Jails
• Programs for Youth in the Criminal Justice System
• Criminal Justice Students Mentor Children in Jail
• Juvenile Gangs in Jails
• Training to Managing the Juvenile in Jail

CHAPTER 16 JAILS: THE GLASS HALF FULL

• The Future of Jails--Demographics and Minorities
• Jail Management and Training
• Direct Supervision
• Women in the Jail Setting and Treatment Programs
• Regional Jails--A Slow but Growing Trend
• Jails, the American Jail Association, Academe, and Technology
• Media Treatment of Jails and E-Mail
• Jails and Privatization

About the Author...

Ken Kerle, Ph.D., has spent more than 30 years in the field of local corrections. He has personally visited (up to 2004) 778 jails in 48 States and numerous penal institutions in the United States, Canada, and 20 countries in Europe and Asia. He was appointed managing editor of American Jails magazine when it made its debut in 1987. He spent 10 years in academe and taught at the community college, college, and university levels. He inaugurated the "jails and academe" column in American Jails magazine in 1999 and established and "jails and academe" panel, an annual feature of the American Jail Association's yearly training conference. He encourages professors who teach criminal justice to tour their local jails with their students and to establish jail internships to give students a practical exposure to the jail environment. The jail is a community agency and Ken believes academics who teach criminal justice subjects need to learn more about jails. An excellent first step is to read this book!

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