Fed report: Lake County Jail needs more employees

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Updated: February 21, 2012 8:27AM

The Lake County Jail has continued to improve its condition, according to the U.S. Department of Justice report, but the county will almost certainly have to pay for more employees and renovations before the conditions, especially medical, are adequate.

The second status report for the jail was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Hammond, coming six months after the first one that tracks the jail. The DOJ sued the county in December 2010, citing numerous health and safety issues in the jail. The sides reached an agreement in which Lake County has to follow through on fixing a list of 99 areas.

According to the newest report, which is based on a site inspection conducted in September, the jail saw improvement in 26 of the categories and had partial or substantial compliance in 76 percent of them. That’s compared to about 60 percent from the last report. One area dropped down to a noncompliance because the jail still had not hired a psychiatrist at the time of the inspection. One has since been hired.

John Bushemi, attorney for Sheriff John Buncich, said he felt the jail had made “substantial” progress since the first report.

“We’re on our way to substantial compliance, and the sheriff feels good about the progress that has been made,” Bushemi said.

The areas seeing the largest gains are in suicide prevention and fire safety. The report had just one area in each that was still considered noncompliant. The report also gave credit to the jail for improving the sanitary conditions at the jail. It noted, however, that full compliance likely wouldn’t happen until more correctional officers were available to keep watch over the inmates and their cells.

The lack of employees continued to be a problem elsewhere in the report, especially for medical and mental health care. However, the jail has switched medical providers since the inspection, and the hiring of Correctional Health Indiana included 15 registered nurses and 14 clinical medical support employees, Bushemi said. He said he didn’t have exact numbers for how many employees were hired before but that the new numbers are large increases.

The report said inmates still experience long delays in getting medical care, such as an inmate who never received an X-ray for a swollen hand and a pregnant woman having complications who didn’t see an obstetrician for two months.

Bushemi said the jail is already making some physical improvements to some of the areas cited in the report and that the county is considering a $2.8 million bond that would help to pay for more improvements. As for increased correctional officers, Bushemi said, Sheriff Buncich is still working with the Lake County Council about finding a way to hire more. A report has identified that the county needs about 65 more.