Without state protections, Idaho jail detainees face dangerous conditions
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Whitney Bryen, InvestigateWest
(InvestigateWest) — Benewah County Jail, a small 16-bed facility in North Idaho, doesn’t have enough deputies to watch its detainees. In central Idaho’s Custer County, emergency dispatchers squeeze checks-ins of jail detainees between calls. To the south, in Twin Falls County, jail detainees wait weeks for needed medications, often never receiving them at all.
The details of these dangerous jail conditions are buried in annual reports penned by the Idaho Sheriffs’ Association, a nonprofit comprised of former sheriffs and law enforcement officers that lobbies on behalf of sheriffs. Last year, one-third of Idaho’s jails failed inspections for violating their own protocols.
But none of the jails, or those running them, faced any consequences.
Unlike most states, Idaho lacks regulatory oversight of local jails. Sheriffs and jail commanders set their own standards. Annual inspections are voluntary, scheduled months ahead of time, and the sheriffs’ association conducting the inspections is exempt from the state’s public disclosure law.
If jails fail the inspections, there’s nobody who can force them to comply.
Results of the voluntary inspections, obtained by InvestigateWest, offer a grim picture of the current state of many Idaho jails. All of the jails that failed inspections this year were overcrowded, understaffed or both.
Sometimes, the conditions posed a clear safety threat to those inside, most of whom had yet to be convicted of the crime they were in jail for.
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In both Clearwater and Twin Falls county jails, suicidal detainees were left unsupervised for hours at a time. Custer County Jail lacks any trained detention officers. And in Benewah County, a detainee had to wait nearly a month for medical care.
Since the sheriffs’ association doesn’t release the reports, InvestigateWest obtained three years of inspections from each of the state’s 35 jails and published them in a public database.
We also conducted a survey of all 50 states to determine how Idaho’s system for ensuring detainee safety measured up. Idaho is one of three states where sheriffs police themselves using voluntary jail protocols and inspections. In most states — 31 — laws dictate minimum jail standards and mandatory inspections are conducted by a state agency.
“I’ve been aware for a while how hard it is to get information out of jails, but I didn’t realize it was this bad, some of the worst oversight in the nation,” said Julia Piaskowski who writes the Idaho Prison Project blog and advocates for criminal justice reforms. “We’re not like big cities with all the crime they deal with, but we have all the same problems of mass incarceration and lack of proper care in our jails so we need a way to address those.”
Kim Quick, whose son Lance died in the Bannock County Jail in 2018, said he’s frustrated with the lack of transparency and accountability that continues today.
“The sheriff’s department failed miserably,” Quick said. “There’s too much of a good ol’ boys club over there so no one’s held accountable.
“There’s gotta be some teeth somewhere,” he said. “Where are the teeth?”
Other jail violations
Ben Wolfinger worked at the Kootenai County jail in North Idaho for nearly 30 years and served two terms as sheriff. Now, he is the jail inspector for the sheriffs’ association, whose mission is to “advocate for all Idaho sheriffs,” according to its website.
During scheduled visits this spring and summer, Wolfinger reviewed logs that track how often deputies check on people behind bars. He asked detainees if they were receiving weekly medical checkups and whether they knew how to report sexual assault or harrasment in the jail. He compared the number of people inside to the number of beds. And he interviewed staff, questioning who performed strip searches on female detainees.
Wolfinger provides sheriffs who oversee the jails with a report that lists violations of the voluntary standards. Their response is out of his hands.
“I think they do a good job of maintaining those standards the best that they can,” Wolfinger said, noting that budgets are limited and funding for new facilities requires voter approval. “Some facilities, they just don’t have the staff or the facility to meet all the standards.”
The sheriffs’ association director, Jeff Lavey, denied InvestigateWest’s request for jail inspection reports saying they are “a courtesy” to sheriffs.
This year, 14 of 35 Idaho jails failed what the association calls “mandatory” standards, according to the inspection reports. Nine more violated at least one of the jail procedures that are “recommended” by the sheriffs’ association, the reports reveal.
That means only 12 jails were in compliance with all inspected guidelines. Even in those facilities, detainees are at risk.
At least six people have died this year in Idaho jails — some of which passed and some of which failed inspections. Idaho doesn’t require jails to report deaths to the state. Nor does it mandate an investigation into what happened. So it’s unclear if violations of the standards contributed to their deaths.
There are no mentions of the people who died or of their deaths in the inspection reports.
The reports did describe how detainees sometimes slept for months on temporary beds.
Deputies neglected to report use of force incidents at one jail. Others lacked a system for identifying sick or dangerous detainees. At some jails, detainees aren’t allowed to go outside and don’t have access to a window.
At the Benewah County Jail, which turned 100 years old this year, detainees interviewed by the inspector complained about the lack of natural light, fresh air and time outdoors, according to a May inspection report. Three other jails also were in violation of these standards.
Benewah County Sheriff Anthony Eells said a lack of light and fresh air damages the mental health of already vulnerable inmates, increasing the risk of self-harm and suicide. But the facility limits his options for improvement.
Eells wouldn’t want to improve conditions too much anyway, he said.
“Every sheriff would be able to comply with jail standards if they had money to build a new jail,” Eells said. “But if jails are like Hilton Inn, then they won’t want to leave. And I don’t want them coming back.”
Idaho’s standards are updated annually by a committee of sheriffs and jail commanders. But both large and smaller jails have struggled to meet the protocols.
This year, Ada and Kootenai County jails, the state’s largest by population located in Boise and Coeur d’Alene, failed their inspections due to overcrowding.
Rural jail officials, meanwhile, said meeting the standards is impossible.
Linda Dubiel runs the jail in Custer County, which encompasses the Sawtooth Mountain Range and the popular tourist town of Stanley. The jail has four cells and can hold up to eight detainees. It was out of compliance with at least 14 standards, including being understaffed and failing to provide detainees with weekly medical care, according to the inspection report.
“The standards are not applicable to jails in smaller areas like ours. We can’t meet the current standards, and I don’t have time for this,” Dubiel said before hanging up the phone.
Clark County Jail, along the state’s northeast border, usually houses one detainee at a time, Roger Stadtman of the sheriff’s office wrote in an email. It failed this year’s inspection.
“We have never been able to pass the inspections because we are so small and have a number of facility and staffing challenges which prevent us from meeting required standards,” Stadtman said.
Even some of the sheriffs and jail commanders on the standards committee aren’t meeting the guidelines they set for themselves. Twin Falls’ sheriff and jail commander and Gooding County’s sheriff assisted with the latest update, and both counties’ jails failed this year’s inspection due to overcrowding.
“We never pass,” Gooding County Sheriff Shaun Gough said. The cells inside the south central Idaho jail were too small. But in early September, the jail completed an expansion that added 14 beds. Gough said he expects to pass the inspection next year.
In the neighboring county of Twin Falls, Jail Commander Capt. Doug Hughes said since Wolfinger’s inspection in May, the jail remains overcrowded but has rectified all other violations. He said plans for a 166-bed jail expansion are underway.
While specifics on cell measurements and staffing make compliance difficult for some jails, experts argue that many of the current standards are too vague. For detainees who require specialized housing due to medical or mental health conditions, the standards call for a “written policy and procedure to govern the management of inmates.” There are no specifics about what those policies should include or what type of housing should be provided.
Idaho’s jail standards were developed in the 1970s after the Civil Rights era led to mass incarceration and the disproportionate imprisonment of people of color. They were developed as a way to deflect liability away from the jails and sheriffs as complaints and lawsuits against jails were spiking nationwide, lawyer and professor Michele Deitch said.
Deitch researches jail inspection programs at the University of Texas Prison and Jail Innovation Lab.
“It was never about making sure people are being treated well or getting what they need,” Deitch said. “That’s why the standards are really, really minimal and very vague. And they have huge gaps.”
Experts who study jail conditions and oversight say local detention centers are often exempt from the checks and balances required of nearly every other government agency. But they shouldn’t be.
Louisiana law professor Andrea Armstrong and her students seek to increase accountability of jails and prisons by publishing data about deaths behind bars.
“Providing safe and secure housing is a core obligation of a jail,” Armstrong said. “And so we should be able to tell as taxpayers, as residents, whether or not they are doing their job, whether their agency is meeting the responsibility that it’s supposed to or whether it may be contributing to preventable deaths due to suicide, violence and deaths that are drug-related.”
“You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken,” she said.
The Northwest lacks oversight
Idaho is one of 19 states lacking the power to oversee or enforce protections for jail detainees — most of whom are not convicted.
Where there is state oversight, the department of corrections or health conducts surprise, annual inspections to ensure jails are following the law. In some of those states, the death or injury of a detainee triggers additional inspections.
Some state agencies have the power to fine jails for repeated violations. Others turn over failed inspections to their attorneys general or local prosecutors, who can take legal action against jails that aren’t following the law.
Like Idaho, jail standards and inspections in Oregon and Washington are voluntary.
Idaho is one of three states, including Oregon and Utah, where the sheriffs’ association oversees voluntary standards and inspections. The Florida Sheriffs Association also oversees local jails. But twice-annual inspections are mandatory, and the association can fine jails that are out of compliance.
Regulations without enforcement undermine the effectiveness of oversight, Deitch said. State oversight can be affected by politics and budget cuts, but it allows for scrutiny and public access that states in the Pacific Northwest lack, she said.
“Any time you’ve got an institution that is responsible for the care and well-being of the people inside, and they’ve got total control over the lives of those people, there needs to be some kind of external mechanism that is ensuring their safety and well-being,” Deitch said.
Idaho jails are required to pass the same fire and food safety inspections as restaurants. Elected sheriffs typically oversee a jail commander, who runs day-to-day operations. And state law requires elected county commissioners, who control the jail’s budget, to visit their local jail every three months. The threat of budget cuts can be a strong incentive for sheriffs to improve jail conditions if commissioners don’t like what they see. But Deitch said more oversight and transparency is needed.
“Commissioners don’t have the training to perform proper inspections,” Deitch said. “And then, as far as the sheriffs doing it themselves, there’s not a lot of confidence in someone saying, ‘Hey, there’s nothing to see here. We’re doing fine.’”
Unknown issue
Idaho lawmakers are either unaware or unconcerned about the lack of jail oversight.
Six years ago, state Sen. Melissa Wintrow was appointed to the Governor’s Criminal Justice Commission. She has also served on the House or Senate judiciary committee for the past decade. She said the topic of jail oversight has never come up.
“I don’t think this is really known or considered by lawmakers,” said Wintrow, D-Boise. “I do think generally, any government entity that deals with our rights and our health should have good scrutiny for the benefit of those people, but also to maintain transparency and good oversight.”
Former Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney doesn’t see Idaho adopting stricter jail standards or inspection procedures anytime soon.
“Idaho loves local control,” said Raney, who oversaw the Ada County Jail for a decade. “No (lawmaker) wants to go against the sheriffs and the sheriffs’ association.”
Now, Raney is a compliance officer helping jails under federal court orders improve conditions. He said jails are very different from prisons, so putting the Department of Corrections in charge of inspections would be problematic. Prisons are filled with people serving sentences for convicted offenses. Jails are built as short-term holding facilities for presumed innocent people awaiting court hearings.
Ideally, Raney said jails would hire a third-party auditor to perform inspections. But that would cost money that most jails can’t spare, he said. And the inspections and changes they brought would remain voluntary.
Lawsuits brought against Canyon County Jail in 2009 and 2011 by detainees forced some change. A lawsuit from the ACLU of Idaho found severe overcrowding at the jail in the Boise suburb of Caldwell that forced prisoners to sleep on the floor and left staff unable to maintain the facility. It also found mold covering the showers, smells emanating from overused toilets and airborne illness spreading rapidly. Another lawsuit exposed deputies for locking inmates who filed complaints about jail conditions in solitary confinement.
In 2016, the jail complied with court orders to improve conditions and reduce crowding. Temporary facilities were added to spread the population out. Prosecutors and judges allowed more people to wait out court dates at home instead of behind bars.
But lawsuits take time, and they’re expensive. And families of those inside said when lawyers get involved, it’s often too late.
Kim Quick and his wife, Shauna, sued the Bannock County Jail after their son died. Lance Quick was a firefighter in Idaho Falls who had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and bipolar disorders. He was 40 when he was arrested during a mental health episode and placed in a cell alone, with no bed, toilet or water. Six days later, he died of dehydration and starvation.
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“We wanted change,” Lance’s dad, Kim Quick, said.
Nearly a year after their son died, the couple settled the lawsuit. They felt hopeless.
“Many of the things we asked for in the lawsuit were already protocol. They just weren’t doing them,” he said. “We didn’t want this to happen to someone else.”
InvestigateWest is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reach reporter Whitney Bryen covers injustice and vulnerable populations, including mental health care, homelessness and incarceration. Reach her at (208) 918-2458, whitney@invw.org and on X @WhitneyBryen.