All prisoners should be provided with safety, support and health care as they serve out their sentences or await court appearances. Sadly, time and again Ohio jails are falling short.
The Editorial Boards of the USA TODAY Network Ohio| Cincinnati Enquirer
No one expects for Ohio jails to be five-star resorts, but incarceration should not give way to cruel and unusual punishment or inhumane conditions for those being held there.
Whatever their offense, all prisoners should be provided with safety, support and health care as they serve out their sentences or await court appearances. Sadly, time and again Ohio jails are falling short of basic expectations – and with deadly consequences.
A yearlong investigation by The Enquirer and The Columbus Dispatch for the USA TODAY Network Ohio uncovered the shocking reasons why more people have died in the custody of Ohio's local jails over the past four years than on death row.
At least 219 deaths were reported by the state between January 2020 and December 2023. Some people didn't last 24 hours behind bars. Twenty-nine percent of the county jail deaths (64) were suicides. Most disturbing is that most, if not all, of these deaths were preventable and 75% of the deceased (166) hadn't even been convicted of a crime.
Dying Behind Bars: At least 220 people died in Ohio jails over 4 years
That isn't justice. Something must change.
'When you go to jail, it's not a death sentence'
It's important to note that jails are not the same as prisons.
They are meant to be temporary holding facilities for people who are just arrested, awaiting court appearances, held pretrial on bonds or serving short-term sentences.
"When you go to jail, it's not a death sentence," said Victoria Bristow, whose son Malcolm Willis died by suicide in the Ross County Jail in 2021.
Willis, 21, who had been placed in a cell by himself told jail staff that he was withdrawing from fentanyl, but his requests for medical attention went largely unanswered. After passing out meal trays, no one checked on Willis until he was found five hours and 20 minutes later hanging from an air vent with a bed sheet around his neck. Guards were supposed to be making hourly wellness checks.
Stories like Willis' were all too common in our investigation.
Reviews of lawsuits, inspection reports, autopsies, investigative documents and surveillance videos found jail personnel often ignored serious medical conditions and injuries. In some instances, jail staff withheld life-saving medicine and equipment and failed to stop the flow of illicit drugs that inmates used to overdose. And in other cases, they did not adequately monitor prisoners at risk of suicide, failed to properly log wellness checks and even taunted prisoners suffering from mental illnesses.
These repeated system failures are making Ohio jails more dangerous and deadly than they should be, and state lawmakers need to develop a sense of urgency and a plan for holding county sheriffs and jail personnel more accountable.
88 county jails, 88 different ways of operating
Currently, 1-in-3 Ohio jails don't comply with all state standards for operations, and many are cited year after year for the same problems.
And when violations are reported, sheriffs can appeal those violations to the Ohio Jail Advisory Board, which is an oversight committee run by fellow sheriffs.
That's akin to having the fox guarding the hen house.
Ohio needs an independent, third-party to review violations, not police policing themselves. We agree with Gov. Mike DeWine that every death at a county jail should be investigated by an outside agency and hope that he and state legislators takes swift action to rectify this glaring problem with oversight.
State lawmakers not only need to make sure the standards already on the books for county jails are enforced, but give them the teeth state inspectors need to punish bad actors. Sheriffs should not be able to thumb their noses at the rules or ignore violations.
There must be real consequences for jails that repeatedly flunk the standards test, otherwise the cost will continue to be measured in prisoners' lives.
Justice should be blind. Not partisan.
The state should also consider bringing uniformity to expectations for jail operations and standards of safety and care. Eighty-eight county jails shouldn't be operating in 88 different ways. Sheriffs should not be able to independently decide whether Narcan can be administered to prisoners who overdose in their jails. Where you get arrested shouldn't determine your likelihood of surviving your jail stay.
Ohio jails aren't equipped to handle addiction, mental health problems
There also needs to be a recognition that closing down some state-run psychiatric hospitals as a cost-saving measure might not have been the best decision in retrospect.
Jails are becoming de facto mental health hospitals and drug treatment centers as a result. State officials thought that health care providers and resources within local communities could rise to meet this need, but the necessary funding and support has failed to materialize.
Now, the nearly 16,000 people in Ohio jails each day who suffer from substance abuse or mental illness – or both – find themselves in a place that is ill-equipped, not properly staffed and hardly prepared to deal with such challenges.
Even DeWine acknowledged after our investigation that jails are "generally not equipped to deal with people with addiction and ... they’re not the ideal place for someone with a mental health problem."
The surveillance video of the 2023 events at the Montgomery County Jail that led to 19-year-old Isaiah Trammell's death is hard to watch. Trammell, who had been arrested for a misdemeanor domestic violence warrant on a case filed in 2022, told deputies during his booking that he had ADHD, autism and said, "I don’t want to live."
Trammell's developmental disability can include hypersensitivity to lights and sounds, difficulty with changes in routines and poor social interactions. That's a recipe for disaster in jails which can be places of shouting, chaos and disruptions.
Shortly after being locked up, Trammel began banging his head against the walls and door of his cell.
Jailers put him on suicide watch and placed him in a restraint chair for two hours to keep him from banging his head against the wall and in a cell with no blanket or mattress.
Later after learning he wouldn't get out of jail any time soon, Trammell spiraled out of control, pacing crying and kicking while in his cell. He flopped onto the concrete floor and then slammed the right side of his head against the cinder block wall four times, knocking himself out briefly.
Five officers rushed in, pinning his legs and handcuffing his wrists before putting him back in the restraint chair. Trammell, now with a golf ball-sized lump on his forehead, begged for his medication, saying, "If I have meds, it'll stop." No medication ever came, but paramedics did take Trammell to the hospital where he died three days later. His death was ruled a suicide.
Trammell should not have been in jail given the severity of his mental illness.
DeWine has said he may ask a group of experts tapped in February to examine overcrowding in state psychiatric hospitals and mental health services in county jails to focus even more on jails after they come back with their initial recommendations.
But time is of the essence. People are moving in and our of our county jails every day, and as this investigation has shown, it doesn't take long for someone suffering from extreme mental illness or addiction to meet an untimely end because of the conditions at some jails.
$175 million in jail improvements isn't enough to stop senseless deaths
Jails are places where people go before sentencing or trial, not places of health care.
And while the state has invested $175 million in jail improvements, according to DeWine, it hasn't been enough to prevent or stop these senseless deaths. In fact, the millions of dollars counties have paid out to defend against or settle wrongful death lawsuits brought by the families of these deceased inmates could have been money spent fixing the problem or investing more in drug treatment and mental health services.
Everybody in jail isn't a saint. And not every one is guilty. People in jail − for the most part − have just been accused of something not convicted. They are certainly more than a number.
They deserve proper treatment, care and humane conditions at a minimum. It's their constitutional right.
We must not allow our county jails to continue to be a death row for detainees, some of whom haven't even had their day in court yet.
This piece was written by Enquirer Opinion Editor Kevin Aldridge on behalf ofthe editorial boards ofthe Columbus Dispatch,The Enquirerand other USA TODAY Network Ohio news organizations. Editorials are fact-based assessments of issues of importance to the communities we serve. These are not the opinions of our reporting staff members, who strive for neutrality in their reporting.
