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Longer jail-suit decree sought
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
CLEVELAND
Lawyers for inmates who won a class-action lawsuit concerning crowded conditions in the Mahoning County jail have asked that the three-year consent decree that settled their lawsuit be extended for a year beyond its scheduled May 17 expiration.
The county’s current recession-induced budget crisis indicates “a substantial likelihood the jail will be operated in an unconstitutional manner,” the lawyers argued in a Friday filing in U.S. District Court.
“Federal court supervision is necessary to prevent inmates from being housed in a dangerous and unsafe environment,” wrote Attys. Robert Armbruster and Thomas Kelley of Akron.
The lawyers noted that the sheriff’s budget has been cut to $11.8 million this year.
The sheriff spent $19,374,221 in 2008; but that was reduced to $17,348,732 last year after deputies took concessions, including a 10 percent pay cut in the form of an unpaid floating holiday every two weeks.
Anthony J. Farris, Youngstown’s deputy law director, said the city plans to oppose extending the consent decree for one year.
“The only way we’d agree to an extension is if we have already entered into an agreement with the other parties that defines the terms,” Farris said.
“I don’t want to just ask for an extension and then wind up with terms that we can’t live with,” pertaining to matters such as when and how prisoners can be released, Farris explained. “How the prisoner-release order is shaped, and who it applies to, is the heart of the matter here,” he said.
The consent decree now in effect includes a prisoner-release order that prioritizes who should be kept in the jail in case some inmates must be released to avoid overcrowding. Highest priority is given to locking up people charged with violent felonies.
The city maintains that it’s the county’s obligation to provide for the housing of all prisoners charged or convicted under Ohio law, either in its jail or elsewhere, Farris said.
The consent decree requires the jail to be fully open and staffed.
A full hearing by the three-judge panel that approved the consent decree is necessary before it could be extended for one year, Farris said.
An agreement under which the city subsidized the county jail by paying $80 per day for each of its misdemeanor inmates beyond its 71st inmate expired in February.
In their Friday filing, Armbruster and Kelley say the county is in contempt of the consent decree because deputies have insufficient continuing education; staffing is short by at least 14 deputies; inmates don’t get outdoor recreation frequently enough; and the jail building maintenance is inadequate.
County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains said only that the county will respond to the inmates’ lawyers’ filing by next Friday’s deadline.