Major changes have been made to the jail in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County this year to address crowding, security issues and abysmal conditions, says a consultant’s report released Friday. County officials still have a long list of challenges to overcome, reports Cleveland.com. A dozen county officials, including County Executive Armond Budish, met with Cleveland.com Thursday to discuss a long list of changes under way in the troubled jail. The meeting was starkly different from one that Budish and his team at the time had with Cleveland.com in December, when the jail director and sheriff were unable to answer many questions. Jail operations have been under fire after a spate of inmate deaths, a U.S. Marshals Service report detailing “inhumane” conditions, an ongoing investigation that has led to criminal charges against 11 jail employees, and an FBI civil-rights probe.
The county hired the American Correctional Association to help guide jail reforms. The association issued its final report this week, saying the county has laid the groundwork for further improvements and is beginning to chip away at chronic problems with inmate crowding and understaffing. For years, a lack of jail staff had led to inmates being locked in their cells for hours at a time for non-disciplinary reasons, a practice known as red-zoning. The jail now has 641 corrections officers, the highest tally ever. That has led to a decline in the use of red-zoning. The number of inmates had been hundreds over capacity for years and spiked drastically in 2018. The jail now is transferring inmates who already have been sentenced to other Ohio jails to serve their time.