Cuyahoga County hires first female jail warden in its history

Cuyahoga County has hired its first woman to lead the beleaguered county jail, where the last two wardens’ tenures ended in accusations of misconduct.

Michelle Henry, an assistant warden at the Lorain Correctional Institution state prison, will make about $96,000 in her new position.

Cuyahoga County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan said will start Aug. 31 at the jail, which is working on improvements after nine inmates died in an 11-month span in 2018 and 2019 and the U.S. Marshals Service found “inhumane” conditions .

The Ohio Attorney General’s Office launched a criminal probe that netted charges against more than a dozen officers for beating inmates, as well as a former warden for misconduct during an inmate death investigation and the former jail director, accused of negligently making decisions that made the jail unsafe.

Jail officers are also the subject of several lawsuits over accusations of misconduct, including beating inmates.

Madigan has not released Henry’s resume.

Henry has 25 years of corrections experience, according to the county.

At the Lorain prison, Henry was in charge of investigations, served as a liaison for outside law enforcement agencies and conducted security inspections and surveillance, according to a statement from the county.

Before that, she served as a correction specialist at the prison, where she supervised housing units and safety and sanitation inspections, among other duties, according to the county.

She will take over as the jail grapples with the coronavirus pandemic that saw a spike in inmate cases in April and May, but has since subsided.

The county last warden, Gregory Croucher, resigned in April after a Cuyahoga County Inspector General’s investigation found he retaliated against officers who reported misconduct, slammed a handcuffed inmate to the wall and forced an employee to drive him to the airport while the employee was on the clock.

Croucher was one of several hires county officials made in an attempt to reform the jail. The county inspector general concluded that Croucher created a “hostile work environment” at the jail.

His boss, jail director Rhonda Gibson, ordered him to self-quarantine after he came back from a trip to Costa Rica, but he walked into the jail without getting a coronavirus screening.

Croucher worked for just shy of eight months before resigning.

He took over for the previous warden, Eric Ivey, who was initially demoted to associate warden over nepotism accusations because he supervised his wife’s supervisor for two months.

Ivey, who was heavily criticized in the November 2018 U.S. Marshals report, ended his tenure at the jail in October after he pleaded guilty to obstructing an investigation into the drug overdose of an inmate and lying to investigators.

He was sentenced to probation. Ivey ordered jail officers to turn off their body cameras in the wake of Joseph Arquillo’s Aug. 27, 2018, death so that evidence couldn’t be used against the county in future court cases.

Part of his plea deal included that he resign from his position at the jail and cooperate with investigators in their on-going probe and to testify against others still facing trial, including former jail director Ken Mills.

Another employee – Martin Devring— faces criminal charges in Arquillo’s deat. Arquillo’s son in May sued the county, Devring and Ivey.