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Editor error: The initial version of this story said that Sheriff T.K. Waters made the comment to Councilman Michael Boylan. It was Judge Lance Day who did.
The city councilman leading a special committee reviewing the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s facilities said Judge Lance Day told him the jail is “an incident away from a federal court order.”
Councilman Michael Boylan made the announcement at the inaugural meeting of the special committee, which will meet for a year to explore replacing the jail and police headquarters.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Federal courts sometimes rule that jail facilities violate inmates’ constitutional rights, sometimes after lawsuits by inmates and sometimes after investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice.
A judge at the time wrote that “the overall environment of the inmate housing areas of the Duval County Jail gave one the psychological feeling of being trapped in a dungeon.”
That order led the Sheriff’s Office to reduce its jail population, and eventually, the Sheriff’s Office built the present jail, which opened in 1991.
Recently, jail conditions have come under scrutiny after The Tributary reported the annual number of deaths tripled after the Sheriff’s Office privatized its medical care, reaching an average of about 13 deaths per year.
At the committee’s first meeting, Council President Ron Salem asked for the committee to investigate the jail’s medical care, including the results of privatizing health care.
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This story was originally published by The Tributary
