State officials order women be moved from Rutherford County Detention Center
Inspection documents show maintenance issues, building code violations and overcrowding in the women's section of the Rutherford County, NC jail. Who's responsible?
Rutherford County, NC Republican James Aaron Ellenburg was sworn into office on December 5, 2022, as the Sheriff. He won the November election with over 68% of the vote. Sheriff Ellenburg did not respond to email and phone call requests for comment for this article.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) Division of Health Service Regulation (DHSR), Jail and Detention Section, has oversight over the state’s 109 local jails and detention centers, including the Rutherford County Detention Center. County jails are operated locally, with responsibility for their operations falling to the elected sheriff. They are funded by the local county commission. State law outlines rules for jails and detention centers, including minimum standards.
On April 19, a state jail inspector came to perform a routine inspection of the Rutherford County Detention Center in Rutherfordton, NC. Cops & Congress has obtained documents, shared by email from County Commissioner Chairman Bryan King, which show maintenance issues, building code violations, and overcrowding in the women's section of the Rutherford County, NC jail. A public records request to state officials for more documents, including a copy of the order to close the women’s section, has not been filled as of May 1.
The April 19 report shows multiple maintenance-related problems and states, “The jail design capacity is 179 male beds and 29 female beds with a total design capacity of 208 beds.” It says, “The female population was nine (9) over the female design capacity of 29,” which “creates a potential (sic) unsafe condition for both detention staff and inmates.” Historical documents from state inspectors show similar building code violations and maintenance-related problems, so what is different now? The overcrowding and worsened building conditions.
Over a week after the inspection, a Facebook post on April 27, was the first time the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office publicly acknowledged what was happening with the maintenance issues and that female inmates have been moved to other counties for “eight weeks.”
“The Rutherford County Detention Facility has been relocating our female inmates to other detention facilities in neighboring counties for temporary housing while the female section of the detention center undergoes much needed (sic) maintenance repairs. The list of maintenance repairs includes plumbing, sand blasting (sic), painting, and fire alarm repairs just to name a few. These inherited maintenance repairs are the result of a facility that is over fifty years old with several years of neglect and therefore are expected to take eight weeks to complete,” the Sheriff’s Office Facebook post said. In an April 16 vodcast, Sheriff Ellenburg said were 35 female inmates.
NCDHHS inspection of detention centers, which are operated by the Office of the Sheriff, is routine. “When a jail fails inspection, DHSR sends a letter to the sheriff, county commissioners, and jail administrators requiring them to develop a ‘Plan of Correction’(POC). A POC is then developed by the sheriff, who sends it to DHSR for review and approval. DHSR approves the vast number of these POCs. If a jail’s conditions are dangerous to jail staff or the people in custody, the DHHS Secretary may close the jail or force corrective action. This is the only enforcement mechanism available to DHHS to bring chronically problematic jails into compliance with jail rules,” a Disability Rights NC report said. The closure/forced corrective action process involves a long period of required notifications and a chance for administrative appeal.
“On the invitation of the Sheriff, Commissioners had an opportunity to tour the detention center at the beginning of the year. The commissioners do not have the authority to enter the detention center on their own. The tour provided by the Sheriff resulted in an open line of communication between the office of the Sheriff and the county on how to address detention center conditions on both a short-term basis and long-term basis. These meetings have been cordial and respectful by all parties,” Bryan King, Rutherford County Board of Commissioners Chairman, said in an email to me in early April. “The Sheriff and I had a lunch meeting at Smith Drugs in Forest City with our legislators and stressed the importance and advocacy for state capital funding for the county priority projects.”
In an email to Cops & Congress on April 27, Chairman King said the Sheriff's Office had many findings that were “concerning to the state inspection team on the sheriff’s office operation of the facility…for example, fire panel not working, light fixtures covered with flammable fabric or paper, port cells covered with toothpaste, mattress not in compliance, fire extinguisher missing, security key programs not in place, proper supervisory rounds not implemented, restroom fixtures out of order, and others.”
“There were also maintenance items on the report. The county is responsible for maintenance. There is a maintenance request web-based portal the sheriff’s office has access to make a maintenance request to the county. Please see the attached work orders report for the detention center. Note – none of the maintenance items that were on the state inspection report had a corresponding maintenance repair request to the county from the sheriff's office (emphasis added by Cops & Congress). The County received a copy of the state inspection report that Thursday afternoon (4/20/23) at 4:00. The Sheriff failed to present to the county the findings of the State inspector from early in the week. The State returned to the detention center on Friday and found the sheriff’s office response up to that point inadequate, and thus made the order to remove the female inmates from the dentition center. I do not have a copy of the order from Friday. The sheriff called me on Friday afternoon to explain what had happened on Friday, however, he couldn’t provide me further information because the very same day a portion of his jail was being shut down by the state, he left to drive to Wrightsville Beach for a long weekend sheriff conference at the beach with his family,” King continued.
The Sheriff’s Office complied with the state’s order and the county and vendors are working on the repairs needed to comply with the state's requests. “Female inmates will be placed in other detention centers during the repair process. The County will incur the costs of housing these inmates during their temporary housing outside of the county. The operation of the detention center is the responsibility of the office of the sheriff. His leadership and leadership team have the task of restoring confidence to the State in their ability to perform their duties as defined in the state constitution. Returning a true ‘corrective action plan’ to the state that they can implement and maintain would be a good first step,” King said.
How old is the Rutherford County Detention Center?
On the April 27 Facebook post, the Sheriff’s Office erroneously said the jail was “over seventy years old.” They corrected it on April 28, to “over fifty years old”. Chairman King said it was built in 1972. State inspection documents say the detention center has been housing inmates since 1975. The expanded tower section, which houses the men, was built in the early 1990s, according to published reports. County property records show the deed was signed in 1992.
The overcrowding issue in the female section of the jail is not new, Rutherford County records show. Chris Francis, the previous Sheriff, had discussions in January 2015 with county officials about the need to expand the jail. It is not unique to Rutherford County. The dangerous conditions found in overcrowded jails are in violation of state regulatory rules and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) National Institute of Corrections guidance about effective, safe jail operations. Overcrowding risks the lives of staff and those housed in the jails. Inspection failures are not rare occurrences, according to a Disability Rights North Carolina (DRNC) investigation about the safety of jails and the effectiveness of state oversight, first released in December 2022. The Rutherford County Commissioners authorized funds last month for a study of the detention center by Moseley Architects.
A DHHS spokesperson told North Carolina Health News that ensuring the health and safety of detainees in local jails requires sufficient local staff and resources, but the small team of jail inspectors frequently hear from jail officials that they are struggling to recruit and train the necessary staff. This is in addition to the frequent shortfalls in jails’ budgets.
“The Sheriff, the Commissioners, the County Manager, County Maintenance and many other vital parts of local government need to be working together if we are ever going to fix a problem,” Cassondra McClung said in a public post on her personal Facebook page. McClung is a detention center investigator, according to the Sheriff’s website. She said there are approximately 40 employees working daily to keep the detention center running and safe. “They didn’t and don’t have the authority to make the changes the jail needs, but they continue to show up,” she said.
May 7-13 is Correctional Officers Appreciation Week, she said. “They do a job some of y’all can’t even begin to imagine. They see people at their lowest and through compassion and care they try to bring them back to a reality that they are worthy of living a good life. There are dangerous inmates who try to hurt the officers. There are inmates so mentally unstable they cover their cell with their own feces and throw urine out of the traps in hopes to hit an officer who is only trying to make sure they are okay,” McClung said.
Deaths among people incarcerated in North Carolina jails more than doubled in the last seven years, rising from 35 in 2015 to 77 in 2022. Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood, president of the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, told the Charlotte Observer that a growing number of people with drug addictions and mental illness behind bars contributes to the rise in the death toll. “This is happening while jails are struggling to find enough detention officers to do the required inmate checks. One death in the Rutherford County detention center shows how that can be a deadly combination. The day before inmate Andrew Hodge, 34, died from a fentanyl overdose, jail staff intervened in four other inmates overdosing. DHHS found 10 missed checks of Hodge over the 20 hours leading up to his death on Jan. 12, 2022,” the Charlotte Observer reported today. Sheriff Ellenburg did not respond to their request for comment.
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About Annie Dance
Annie Dance has been a journalist for over 20 years and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication with a concentration in Journalism from Manhattan College. She completed 42 credits for a Master of Arts in Communication degree at Fairfield University. She has been published in local, national, and international publications, including Hearst newspapers and websites, CTInsider.com, NewsTimes.com, and others. She is the Founding Editor of Western NC Deaf Community, a public Facebook group, where she covers deaf issues and leads discussions for ways deaf people can get better access to news and information in the 19 counties of western North Carolina. She was diagnosed with a profound hearing loss as a child and is an accessibility advocate, especially for the use of closed captioning.
Dance has experience in government affairs, media, and public policy. She is a registered unaffiliated voter and strives for fairness, truth and accuracy in her work.
Dance has family roots in Raleigh. She served on local and state commissions in Connecticut for several years prior to moving to Rutherford County, North Carolina in 2020. She worked on local, state, and federal Republican candidates’ campaigns, including Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District.
She aims to shine a light on important issues and hold officials accountable with Cops & Congress.