Volusia Jail’s

controversial inmate observation program assigns inmates to monitor ... other inmates.

The job is called “INOB,” which is pronounced “Eye Nob.” That’s shorthand for “inmate observer.”

Inmates who are assigned to INOB duty at the Volusia County Branch Jail must watch fellow inmates who are detoxing from drugs or have been judged to be potentially suicidal, and who are naked except for a smock and a stiff blanket they can use to cover themselves in an observation cell.

Stefan Cole Kifner, 20, is among those inmates assigned to INOB duty. In a recent interview, he described how suicidal or detoxing inmates would sometimes sob or moan in front of him. Others walk around naked. Some are in restraints.

The job began to bother Kifner, who is serving time for a probation violation. So he said he asked jail personnel to be taken off INOB duty and given another job.

“I’m willing to work, just not this,” he said.

But Kifner said he was ordered to do INOB duty, or else. When he refused, he said he was made to serve 15 days in disciplinary confinement. And he lost five days of time off his sentence for good behavior.

“I’m going into lockdown for refusing to do it. Because I don’t want to watch naked inmates,” he said in a phone interview from jail.

Prison experts questioned using inmates to watch suicidal inmates.

“First of all, nobody should be required to do it. It should be a voluntary job. It’s fine to compensate people for it but it should never be ‘do this or else,’ ” Joel A. Dvoskin, a forensic psychologist and professor at the University of Arizona Medical School, said in a phone interview.

It’s difficult to find suitable inmates to do the job, said Terry Kupers, a forensic psychologist and a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California.

“What we know is that suicides happen to people who are alone in a cell so one of the solutions is to put someone next to them,” Kupers said in a phone interview. “But then they make all kinds of outrageous moves like having someone who doesn’t want to do it in a situation where he doesn’t have a choice. All that is horrible.”

Ron McAndrew, a former Florida prison warden who now has a prison and jail consulting service, was more blunt about the INOB program.

“In my wildest imagination, I cannot imagine doing it,” McAndrew said after hearing a description of the INOB program. “I cannot believe they are doing it. That’s money-saving lunacy is what it is. One lawsuit could sink the jail.”

But in an email, Volusia County Corrections Director Mark Flowers dismissed the views of the psychologists, whom he wrote were “professors and not practitioners.”

“I wonder if they are aware that prisons and jails across the country are using this same program and that it has been called a ‘Best practice’ among practitioners,” Flowers wrote.

After Flowers’ email, county spokeswoman Joanne Magley responded to inquiries about the INOB program via email. She wrote that the program supplements security staff. She also wrote that jails in Atlanta and Louisville use similar inmate observer programs. Jail officials in both those cities did not return phone calls or emails late last week.

All sentenced inmates in Volusia County are required to work, Magley wrote. Inmates awaiting sentence may volunteer to work. But the jail appears to lump the job of watching suicidal inmates with jobs like cooking, mopping, barbering or laundry duty.

“Inmates who refuse to work are disciplined. So, an inmate who refuses to wash dishes would be disciplined for disobeying an order just as an inmate who refuses an INOB assignment would be disciplined,” Magley wrote.

She wrote that the jail received support from a psychiatrist at StewartMarchman-Act and the jail’s medical provider, Armor Correctional Healthcare, both of which provided information for training inmates for INOB work. And, Magley wrote, one inmate on INOB duty was rewarded with five days off his sentence for stepping in and possibly saving the life of a fellow inmate who attempted suicide.

But Volusia County’s jail is the only county facility that uses inmates to watch other inmates in the 7th Judicial Circuit covering Volusia, Flagler, St. Johns and Putnam counties.