Friday, July 30, 1999
Butler eager to put jail inmates in tent
Heat isn't problem, chief deputy says
BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Inmates helpset up a tent at the Butler County airport.
(Michael Snyder photo)
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HAMILTON — After five jail inmates finished pounding all the wooden stakes into the ground Thursday, Chief Deputy Rick Jones looked with satisfaction at the large green military surplus tent standing near the parking lot at the Butler County Regional Airport.
“It seems to be in real good shape,” he said.
To provide relief for the crowded Butler County Jail, the sheriff's department is considering placing up to 20 inmates in the tent at an undetermined site.
The sheriff's department set up the 28-by-14-foot tent Thursday to check its condition. It passed inspection.
“Except for a couple of small tears in the top, it looks pretty good,” said Capt. Norman Lewis, jail warden.
Chief Jones said the sheriff's department will observe all health and safety requirements if it decides to put inmates in the tent.
“We wouldn't do anything that wasn't humane,” he said.
The current heat wave shouldn't cause any special problems for inmates in the
tent, he said.
Fans will be placed in the tent, and the flaps can be pulled up to allow breezes to blow through, Chief Jones said.
Authorized by state regulations to house no more than 85 inmates, the jail has been packed on several recent days with more than 200 prisoners. With only 168 beds, many prisoners have been sleeping in cots in the jail garage and on mattresses on the floor.
Sheriff Harold Don Gabbard decided to re-examine the possibility of using the tent for inmates, an idea he first proposed more than a year ago. In January 1998, a Butler County contingent visited a jail tent compound in Arizona that had received national attention, and they returned impressed.
County officials supported the idea, but Sheriff Gabbard dropped the proposal when the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction failed to approve it.
Chief Jones said he hopes the revival of the jail tent proposal makes the public more aware of the jail's space problems. The county plans to build a new jail, but it won't be ready for more than two years.
Unlike last year, the sheriff won't seek the state's permission to place inmates in the tent.
“They can't stop us from putting up the tent,” Chief Jones said. “The tent is a viable option for us.”
Harry Hageman, chief of the correction department's Bureau of Adult Detention, said state law requires all new or renovated jails to be reviewed by the bureau and to meet its construction criteria.
“We'll need to contact them and see what their plan is and take it from there,” Mr. Hageman said. “We'll try to work with them to see how we can help.
Several inmates Thursday didn't like the idea of living in a tent in the summer heat.
“It'd be hot and miserable in there,” said James Proffit, an inmate of Resolutions, the county's minimum-security facility in Hamilton. Mr. Proffit helped set up the tent Thursday.
Resolutions is air-conditioned, but the county jail is not.
Kerwan Brown, who's in the makeshift cell area set up in the county jail's garage, said the tent doesn't appeal to him.
“It's too hot to be outside,” he said. “I'd rather be here.”
But another jail inmate, Gurney Fugate, said he could see some advantages to being imprisoned in an outdoor tent instead of the jail.
“In a way, I'd rather be outside to get away from the jail feeling,” he said. “It's probably hotter in here than it would be in the tent.”
The sheriff is considering two or three possible locations for the tent, Chief Jones said. He wouldn't divulge them.
“The sheriff doesn't want to cause any alarm,” he said. “We wouldn't put the tent in an open field. We would put it in a fenced area.”
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