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Does 26th and Cal need more guards?Chicago JournalOctober 5, 2005By Chris Kirkham, Medill News ServiceCook County Board President John Stroger told a federal judge Wednesday he is committed to adding more guards at the Cook County Jail, despite an anticipated $300 million budget shortfall. County Board members are awaiting an independent study set to come out in November that will detail the specific number of additional officers needed to staff the jail, which in recent years has come under fire for overcrowding. Conditions at the jail are monitored under a federal consent decree
dating back to 1982. "I want that number plugged into the budget without any problem and without the to-do of last year," said Marovich, referring to bickering between the Sheriff’s Office and County Board members over jail staffing during the last budget season. Sheriff Michael Sheahan already has requested an additional 250 corrections officers for next year’s budget, spokesman Bill Cunningham said. Last year, the County Board added 283 jail guards at a cost of $14 million. "There’s a lot of responsibility that we have running the jails," Sheahan said at Wednesday’s hearing. "We need a safe environment where prisoners feel safe and where guards feel safe." He stressed that a vote in favor of new guards is imperative. "When the tough choice comes to vote for public safety, if there’s anybody who can’t do it, they shouldn’t be in office," Sheahan said. Commissioner Mike Quigley, however, said the Sheriff needs to make cuts within his own department to pay for the additional officers, not pass the burden onto taxpayers. "(The Sheriff’s Office) wants the benefits of increased taxes, but without the political price," said Quigley, who is running for County Board president. "For the Sheriff to assume that he does not have to be part of that process is ridiculous." Stroger’s spokeswoman, Caryn Stancik, said the board president will adhere to the wishes of the court but that he is waiting to see results of the study before he will commit to a specific number of additional guards. The independent study on the number of officers is set to be released Nov. 15. It is the first of its kind in almost 10 years, said Charles Fasano, a director with the John Howard Association, the prison watchdog group that has been monitoring the county jail. In past years, the John Howard Association has recommended additional guards but had no specific study to back it up. The study will analyze the number of guards per prisoner for each unit of the jail and will account for special cases where more guards are needed for certain prisoners. According to the Cook County Sheriff’s office, the jail currently houses approximately 9,000 prisoners. The next hearing before Marovich is scheduled for Dec. 22. Earlier Wednesday, Stroger released a similar but unrelated study about the length of stay for prisoners in the county jail. Previous studies by the John Howard Association found that the average length of stay for prisoners in the county jail was more than 180 days, raising questions about criminal cases being bogged down in the legal system. The new report released, Wednesday by Professor Joseph A. Trotter from American University in Washington, contradicted those findings. Trotter’s report found that the average length of stay for an inmate was about 37 days, which is similar to the court systems in Los Angeles and New York City. The disparity between the two reports was because of the analysis used, Trotter said. Trotter’s report averaged the number of days inmates spent in jail and the number of inmates released, whereas the earlier study analyzed the length of stay only on one particular day. Fasano, of the John Howard Association, which conducted the earlier study, said both studies skew the average amount of time by over- or underestimating the more complex cases where jail inmates have to stay longer before their cases go to trial. To address the problem, Trotter’s study calls for an advisory board made up of public defenders, the U.S Attorney’s Office, judges and law enforcement officials to pinpoint cases where trials have been delayed and get the process moving.
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