201 Poplar facing similar issues as NOLA jail, where 10 inmates escaped
by: Jessica Gertler
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The search has lasted weeks to find the inmates who broke out of a New Orleans jail.
A jail that has a series of issues. The same issues at 201 Poplar in Memphis.
Ten inmates escaped from the jail in New Orleans earlier this month. It sparked a massive manhunt and garnered the nation’s attention. Many are asking, how this could happen?
“This facility was never designed to be a maximum security jail,” the sheriff later stated.
The Louisiana Attorney General also added staffing is not the only problem. She said 160 doors are broken or can’t even close due to inmates tampering and jamming them.
Sound familiar? The very problem was reported at 201 Poplar, the Shelby County Jail.
“Milk cartons that the detainees get for lunch and dinner, they’re taking those and jamming doors,” Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner said last year.
In a recent interview, Sheriff Bonner told WREG Investigators the facility in New Orleans has the same sliding-type doors that 201 does.
“Eventually they just wear out. Unfortunately, the inmates figured it out,” Bonner said.
Bonner said last year, cell doors broke due to wear and tear or the inmates. The commission cut a $6 million check to replace 600 of them.
As of last week, seven of the 89 pods are fixed. The work could take 18 months.
“Because these are steel doors, they are having to be fabricated,” Bonner explained.
It’s yet another Band-Aid on the crumbling facility.
“When you put your finger in the dam in one spot, there’s another spot where, you know, the dam is leaking,” Bonner said.
Data shows more than 1,800 work orders were tallied last year for things like no air conditioning, rotting cinder blocks, a fried computer system, broken elevators and escalators and water leaks on every floor that has now caused a pest infestation.
“We’re spraying five days a week in jail, because of the bug issues that we have. It leads to another problem, because our inmates are now using the bug spray to get a high with,” Bonner said.
Wednesday, the county commission approved another $1.2 million to cover escalator repairs.
Another issue on top of a growing inmate population, and other issues like an contraband, inmate assaults, arsons and more. It can be been hard retaining and recruiting staff.
Thursday, the sheriff’s office announced it entered a contract with retired Criminal Court Judge J. Robert Carter to serve as a jail population management coordinator. He will meet with key stakeholders and the community to find ways to scale back the jail population.
Meanwhile, the sheriff said they’ve upped salaries and benefits, added signing bonuses and recruited an advertising firm to help.
“It’s just like in New Orleans. Every jail across the country is short of staff, and we’re no different,” he said.
Criminal Court Judge Chris Craft said he’s watched the issues at 201 creep into his courtroom.
“I had 40 inmates today,” he said. “I think seven made it up.”
The seven were brought upstairs hours after court started.
“They don’t know where they are in the jail,” Craft said. “We have no way of calling the jail and finding out, because there’s only one jailer for like 40-45 inmates. It’s more difficult. It’s more burdensome.”
Oftentimes, Craft said the attorney can’t wait, so the case is reset. That means the business or the plea is pushed off for a week or even a month.
“The person spends more time in jail. That’s like at $110 a day to the taxpayer for the food and the lodging and the medical help and all that,” Judge Craft said. “The inmate doesn’t know when it’s set. Hopefully that attorney will visit him and tell him when his case is set.”
That doesn’t always happen, so mistrust mounts. Sometimes the inmate requests a new attorney, and it delays the case even more.
“My concern is the inmates have a right to be in court for their case and not just have it put off,” Judge Craft said. “We could get them out a lot quicker if we had the personnel. It’s not the sheriff’s fault. Sheriff Bonner’s doing everything he can.”
Judge Craft said it’s slowing down the system.
“It really is. This morning I had to reset four or five cases, because we couldn’t get their inmates up,” he said.
Sheriff Bonner believes a new jail will solve a lot of the problems. New designs require less staff and create a better working environment.
The problem is, the people in power have yet to act.
State lawmakers didn’t pass a bill allowing taxpayers to vote on a sales tax increase to pay for a new jail. So far, the county remains idle.
Bonner doesn’t think it will happen in this next budget, but he said work is happening behind the scenes.
A jail study is wrapping up. It examined the cost to build a new jail downtown, out east on county property or in North Memphis. Bonner said the project could reach a billion dollars, because crime and population trends indicate the new jail will need another thousand beds.
“Prices are going to go up the longer we keep kicking the can down the road. This thing is going to get more and more expensive,” he said.
Just like 201, the jail in New Orleans was once a state-of-the-art building, but is now an understaffed, ailing facility stretched to its capacity.
That likely contributed to this jailbreak, which the escapees taunted as too easy. They wrote in the cell above a hole in the wall, “Easy LOL.”
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