MAHONING COUNTY Lawyers file report dealing with lawsuit

To protect civil rights of prisoners, a federal judge could order reduction of number of inmates.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Lawyers for Mahoning County have advised a federal judge presiding over a jail inmates' class-action lawsuit about some bad news and what they thought was some good news.
The bad news first.
In a report filed Wednesday in Akron federal court, Columbus attorneys Daniel T. Downey and Mark Landes let U.S. District Judge David D. Dowd Jr. know that the Mahoning County Sheriff's Department was allocated $7.5 million to operate this year. The sheriff had asked for $16.9 million.
Now the good news.
The Columbus attorneys said the sheriff's department would receive nearly $3 million this year from housing federal inmates. In 2004, housing federal detainees brought in that amount, the lawyers said.
But Wednesday, Peter J. Elliott, the chief U.S. marshal for northern Ohio, said he was considering pulling most of the 80 federal detainees out of the county jail and housing them at the privately owned Northeast Ohio Correctional Center.
Downey and Landes could not be reached to comment on Elliott's plans.
Lawsuit
The lawsuit was filed in November 2003 against the county and Sheriff Randall A. Wellington by Akron attorneys Robert Armbruster and Thomas Kelley. They allege understaffing and overcrowding violates inmates' civil rights.
The lawyers contend the county's failure to adequately fund the sheriff's department, which leads to understaffing, amounts to punishment of pretrial detainees and cruel and unusual punishment for inmates serving a sentence.
Downey and Landes, meanwhile, informed Judge Dowd in their report that county commissioners agreed to place the twice-failed half-cent sales tax on the May 3 ballot. The tax generates about $14 million annually.
If the sales tax passes, the first revenues would be generated during the last quarter of the year, the lawyers said.
The money, though, won't be available until January 2006, county officials have said.
Also, the sheriff's department has aggressively pursued other revenue sources, including the anticipated installation of pay phones in each cell. The phones could generate $1.2 million this year, the county's lawyers said.
After trial in December 2004, Judge Dowd instructed both sides to submit post-trial briefs by Feb. 21 in lieu of closing arguments.
The judge, if he concludes that inmates rights are being violated, can order that the jail population, which has been hovering around 640, be reduced. His decision is expected within the next week or so.
Both sides filed their post-trial briefs without mentioning the sheriff's slashed budget. That changed Wednesday with the defendants' report of funding.
The sheriff
Wellington, in reaction to his slashed budget, said he wants input from commissioners before moving inmates to other jails, which will cost the county a daily rate per inmate. The sheriff must also begin laying off deputies.
The county's lawyers, in their post-trial brief, said evidence presented at trial failed to prove jail conditions pose a substantial risk of serious harm.
They said double bunking, for example, is an accepted practice and was anticipated when the jail opened in 1996. The inmates' lawyers argue that crowded cells create tension and lead to fights.
Downey and Landes said inmates receive a wide range of privileges, including cable TV, showers, washers and dryers, indoor recreation, visitation, commissary, rehabilitation-type training and much more.
Armbruster and Kelley said those privileges are mostly unavailable because of prolonged periods when inmates are locked in their cells because of too few guards. Also, they said the sheriff pulls deputies from the jail to perform other duties, which creates unsafe conditions.
While inmates may not have access to programs they had in the past, there exists a fundamental difference between depriving a prisoner privileges he may enjoy and depriving him of the basic necessities of life, the county's lawyers said.