Jail attains state standards

BONNERS FERRY — “I’ve been told that our facility would never be able to meet the standards,” said Boundary County Sheriff Dave Kramer about the Boundary County Jail. “It’s been one of my goals.”

After some creative, out-of-the-box thinking and a lot of hard work, on July 7 they received official word that Jail Standards Coordinator/Inspector Cindy Malm is recommending the jail for certification, as they have now met all of the mandatory requirements for Idaho Counties Risk Management Program.

“Sheriff Kramer, the Commissioners, and the staff have all worked hard to bring the jail into full compliance with the mandatory Idaho Jail Standards,” said Malm. “Needless to say, I am thrilled to be able to recommend them for a Certificate of Compliance.

One of the challenges that Kramer faced, was to provide the inmates with an indoor recreational area, that would be within a secure facility, yet there was no room in the building itself.

“We’ve put an enclosed carport inside our outdoor exercise area that will meet the mandatory standard,” said Kramer.

The carport provides an indoor facility during cold or rainy weather, but also has a large garage door that opens, providing a shaded area during the summer. The building can also function as a meeting place.

“The indoor recreation/activity room was a much needed addition to the jail and it was interesting seeing the creation go from a possibility to a reality in such a short time,” said Malm.

One program that is still in the infancy stages, is a counseling program for the inmates, run by volunteers. They will be able to meet with inmates in the new facility. “They are putting on training for any of the inmates that want to participate; trying to change their behavior and accept some responsibility, so they are not recycling back into our facility,” said Kramer.

“For the jail standards, there is the recommended and mandatory standards,” Kramer explained. “We have met all the mandatory and we have met almost all of the recommended standards.”

One of the recommended standards pertains to the food preparations area. It is recommended that it have direct supervision, but the location makes that difficult. Instead, they have surveillance cameras in that room, so it is monitored both by dispatch and can also be monitored by the detention deputies.

One area of the jail certification that they didn’t have the capabilities to meet pertained to the holding cell. Although they can meet all the needs for a temporary holding cell, Kramer had to give testimony and do a presentation down in Boise, to request a variance for that one item, which was granted.

“We made a change in the food service,” said Kramer. “With the changes we made, it looks like we can potentially save about $13,000 a year and still meet the nutritional needs for the inmates, that we are required to do.”

Some food items, which have no real nutritional value such as condiments, have been removed from the program. “I’ve eliminated those, because I don’t think the taxpayers should be paying for the extras. We will meet the needs. It is good food that they are getting, but I have to look at it from the taxpayer’s standpoint too.”

“I want to make sure that we take care of the immediate needs of the people that are staying in the jail, but on the other hand, I don’t want the taxpayers, or anyone else, to make it so that is a motel room or a plush resort.”

To aid in saving taxpayer dollars, the mattresses are returning to one per inmate, as opposed to the two that were previously issued. ”I don’t care if it’s not perfectly comfortable, but we run into problems with more mattresses,” said Kramer. “They are expensive.”

There have been many other changes throughout the jail, such as fixing leaky old valves, a task taken on by volunteer Bob Rexford. “In a building like this- they are a challenge,” explained Kramer.

They also eliminated two beds from one holding cell, to achieve the required floor space per individual, as required by the standard.

“We are not out of the woods yet,” Kramer explained. “There are still a lot of challenges as we move forward. The population of what our jail is rated for is 23 inmates, and a lot of that is based on an even mixture between females and males, sentenced and unsentenced. So most times we are at maximum capacity.”

So this remains a problem that must be faced in the future. “I don’t see it ever changing to where we are going to start having a lot fewer people in jail,” said Kramer, “especially as our office is becoming more and more proactive. I think we will continue to be filling up our jail. So we are going to have to be looking at some point, at where do we go from here.”

Another aspect of that problem is that when the jail was originally built, it was a time when there were not as many female inmates, and it was designed to accommodate accordingly.

“Unfortunately, now we see on a regular basis, more females. A lot of it’s due to the drugs, the meth, the heroin… and that hasn’t been changing a lot, so we still have some challenges with space allocation,” said Kramer.

They are hoping there might be areas within the Sheriff’s Office that can eventually be reconfigured. With some adjusting and moving people about, they may be able to open up another area in the future to accommodate those who are not really at risk people, but need to serve their two days in jail.

At this time, when the jail reaches capacity, they must find other locations to try and house the inmates, but that costs the county taxpayers more money. Other jails are facing similar problems. In Kootenai County, they are expanding their jail facility. “All the Sheriffs are finding that there is not a lot of space available, so they are fighting to find spaces where they can hold someone,” said Kramer.

Despite the problems faced by limited capacity, Kramer and his team of volunteers continues to strive toward improving the jail, and the certification is a step that was once thought impossible.

“It’s been a team effort,” said Kramer. “The responsibility for the physical jail, falls back on the county commissioners. The Sheriff has the responsibility of running it. I think that we have a good partnership, we work well together.”

Kramer also applied for another grant and just received approval for a secondary security fence, that will be going in behind the Sheriff’s Office, referred to as a sally port. The fence, with an electronically controlled gate, will protect law enforcement when they bring in prisoners. It will also extend around the existing outdoor exercise yard, so it will create a boundary between the two fences for added security so that people can’t come up close to the exercise yard, hide contraband or try to communicate with the female prisoners through the window.

“It’s been approved, we’ve got the contractor, we are just waiting for him to install it now,” said Kramer.

Kramer set many goals when he became the Boundary County Sheriff, and he is achieving them, one step at a time. His goal of getting the jail certified seemed to be against all odds.

The jail standards were first created in 1978 in direct response to a report issued by the Idaho Governor’s Council on Criminal Justice in June of 1975, describing the majority of Idaho Jails as being “Obsolete, inadequate, and incapable of complying with state law.”

The standards were revised in 1990. At one time the committee allowed operational certificates to jails, whose operations met standards, but the building did not. They changed that in 2006, making the standards universal, despite the difficulties faced by smaller or older facilities.

“It is possible that our jail, at some point, may have had just an operational certification, but as far as the records show, and as far as I can find out, our jail has never met the full certification standards,” Kramer explained. “So this, we believe, is the first time that our jail is being recommended for certification.”

“The certification means that you are striving to meet the standards for proper care, for the safety of the employees and the people that we hold,” said Kramer. “The county’s insurance carrier reduced our coverage because we were not meeting those standards. It’s really exciting that it’s a new milestone, I think, for the county and the Sheriff’s Office, that we were able to meet the certification standards.”

Kramer’s hard work and creative thinking earned him the opportunity to sit on the jail standards committee for the state of Idaho. “I think it will be good because as a smaller jail, we can also represent a lot of the challenges that many of us have with the smaller jails throughout the state,” said Kramer. “In comparison to the Ada County Jail or Kootenai County Jail — they house hundreds- we still have to provide the same type of services, but it is a lot more difficult in these smaller facilities.”

Kramer is proving that there is a big difference between “difficult” and “impossible.”