SEATTLE — A U.S. Justice Department investigation of the King County Jail has found serious failures in protecting inmates from harm and in providing medical care.
After Justice Department investigators inspected the jail in March and August, they reported the King County Correctional Facility “fails to adequately protect inmates from harm and serious risk of harm by staff.” Their report also said the jail “fails to adequately protect inmates from self harm” and fails to provide adequate medical care.
In findings released by letter Tuesday, the department said it would sue if the county does not make improvements. But the report also commended the jail staff for their responsiveness during the study and mentioned that some improvements were already in the works.
In a response Wednesday, jail authorities agreed improvement is needed, but disagreed about the contention that the constitutional rights of inmates were being violated.
“We are concerned by the issues raised in the report and in fact have been planning and implementing improvement strategies even before their review began,” said a joint statement from the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention and the county health department.
The jail in Seattle, which was built in 1986 and can hold 1,700 inmates at one time, houses more than 50,000 people a year.
The Justice Department report called for more staff training and better policies concerning the use of force and defensive tactics.
“Inmates at KCCF are routinely subjected to unnecessary uses of serious force. Staff at KCCF are quick to resort to serious physical force or pepper spray, even when the inmate is passive or poses no immediate security threat,” the report said.
Investigators found frequent and routine use of a painful and degrading tactic known as the hair-holding technique, which involves grabbing and pulling an inmate’s hair. Equally effective but less painful ways to get inmates to obey orders are taught in self-defense corrections classes, the report said.
A document outlining the jail’s policy concerning force authorizes “lethal force” as a response to “active aggravated aggression,” but does not define this kind of aggression.
The investigation found an “abnormally high number” — more than 25 cases since 2006 — of internal investigations concerning custodial sexual misconduct. Some of these cases were closed with undetermined findings and no discipline of staff members. The report said an “alarming number of security staff” have been accused of sex-related misconduct.
A number of deficiencies were identified concerning jail medical care — from inadequate prevention of communicable diseases to inadequate treatment of chronic conditions and inadequate emergency care.
The report contains nine pages describing cases where inmates received inadequate medical care.
A recent inmate death, which the federal investigators considered preventable, was cited as the most egregious example of the jail staff’s failure to protect the health of inmates.
The man was repeatedly misdiagnosed, had his care delayed several times and eventually died in a hospital, after days of pain, from what was probably a perforated gastric ulcer.
The report criticizes the way the jail handles internal investigations of all kinds, blaming a lack of training, policies and inadequate record keeping.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
