2 counties’ jail taking virus precautions

In an effort to limit the chance of coronavirus from infecting their county jails, the sheriffs in Jefferson and Sebastian counties are taking steps to reduce the risks for prisoners and staff.

Jefferson County Sheriff Lafayette Woods Jr. said he is limiting new arrivals to those who are arrested for violent crimes and screening everyone who comes in to determine if they are at risk for exposure.

The sheriff said he has tried to be proactive in his attempts to keep the virus from entering the jail population.

“We started very early on putting measures in place to limit potential exposure from the outside,” Woods said. “We’re checking temperatures of our jailers coming in and out, but also making sure that anyone who comes in is screened, their temperature is checked, they fill out a questionnaire, and anyone who fits the criteria is isolated for 14 days.”

He said he has set up a special area to house any inmates who are deemed to be high risk.

“We’ve cleared out an area in the front of the jail where we can put new arrivals after they have been screened and keep them isolated from the rest of the population for 14 days,” Woods said. “We’ve only had one so far who has been brought in who is in that category, so they’ll be held in our administrative section for 14 days unless they bond out before the 14 days are up.”

Woods said he has one cell large enough to house eight inmates and three single person cells that can be used to hold two inmates at a time. He said inmates arrested on the same date will be housed together, and kept separate from the general population and other inmates being held in isolation who are arrested on different dates. So far, he said, he has been able to avoid an influx of new arrivals that would overrun his limited space.

“So far we haven’t run into that situation and I think the reason we have not is that we’ve turned away quite a few,” he said. “Unless it’s serious, like physical assault with a weapon, homicide, or if it’s domestic and the person is actually on site, we’ll take those as well.”

Woods did say that currently, domestic battery is the only misdemeanor offense he is locking people up for.

“The thing about that is, we don’t want to turn somebody loose and the next thing you know it’s a homicide,” he said.

Woods said he has not released any jail inmates in response to the pandemic, and said at this point, he sees no reason to.

“It sounds crazy but right now the jail is the safest place you can be,” he said.

In Sebastian County, Sheriff Hobe Runion said his office has implemented procedures to manage the inmate population at the county jail. Working with the state, meaning the Arkansas Department of Corrections and Arkansas Community Correction, as well as local agencies, the department has brought average daily population at the jail down from about 360 inmates to about 250 to 260 right now. The jail has the space for 356 beds.

“What we have to do is we have to plan for a worst-case scenario,” Runion said. “We have to plan that this virus is going to end up in our facility, and we have to have a place to put these inmates.”

“So what we’ve essentially done is made it possible to have two empty pods. Those two pods are what we call ‘negative air pods.’ In other words, they wouldn’t be blowing the air and the virus into the rest of the facility. So we had to reduce our numbers to that level.”

Runion said the sheriff’s office has gotten with the state, and had them pick up many state prisoners.

“A lot of people …, Parole might have a hold on them, and they don’t have any local charges,” Runion said. “We told them to take them somewhere else or figure out something. We weren’t going to hold them.”

These prisoners are what Runion called “technical violators,” such as people who have failed drug tests.

Police departments in the county have also been doing all they can to assist the sheriff’s office with not arresting certain misdemeanor offenders. However, other misdemeanors, such as domestic battery and driving while intoxicated, still warrant a trip to the jail.

In collaboration with the Sebastian County prosecuting attorney and local courts, Runion said some inmates being held on nonviolent charges, including failure to appear, theft of property and others, have also been released on electronic monitoring. The sheriff’s office has a full-time director of inmate management who looks at the charges of everyone who comes into the jail.

“And he’ll look at, No. 1, are they someone that is eligible for electronic monitoring,” Runion said. “Are they eligible for a reduced bond? Are they eligible for a signature bond? And then, we’ll send the recommendations to the courts and the prosecutor, and then they can decide if they’re willing to work with us on that.”

In addition to other practices, the sheriff’s office has been doing work on its own to try to prevent covid-19 from entering the jail. An example Runion gave are inmate health screenings being carried out at intake. Although the jail has had two scares so far, neither of them ended up being covid-19.

The Sebastian County sheriff’s office is also trying to make sure it has an adequate amount of supplies, including personal protective equipment, in the jail, with a significant amount of cleaning taking place at the facility as well, according to Runion.