#county jails

But when Congress passed a certain series of laws in the 1980s and 90s, what they wanted to do was create a system in which people who were accused of crimes, particularly at the time, drug crimes, would be able to be immediately deported in a way that was basically faster. So they didn't have to be convicted. So normally, if you're accused of a crime, you have a right to a trial, then you might be convicted or acquitted, or you might plea out.

But if you are determined to be undocumented, you can actually be put into deportation proceedings before anyone brings you to trial. So you just are arrested and charged, and you can go immediately into deportation proceedings. And it turned out that this was a pretty effective way for police to interact with the immigration system.

And sheriffs became a lynch point originally because they run county jails.

So county jails are kind of the first stop if you're arrested. If you are unfortunate enough to be arrested, you will go through the county jail, at which point they take your ID, your fingerprints, right?

They take a variety of information. And sheriffs kind of became really useful because they were in the jail already, so they could interview people, ask them where they were from, ask them if they had proof of citizenship, and then help ICE put them into deportation proceedings. And alongside that, sheriffs were also able to make some money by housing people awaiting deportation in their jails.

That's also the benefit for them. The federal government houses about 25% of immigrants in detention in county jails right now. And they pay these sheriffs a per diem.

So they get paid sort of per day to keep people in their jails. And it's one of the ways that sheriffs are able to use that jail kind of as a political tool, right, to make money for their county.

So under Trump, two things happened. One was that anti-immigration groups, so I mentioned the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR. That was a group that was already in existence.

They are an anti-immigrant group. And they began to email sheriffs, especially sheriffs that they knew were kind of constitutional sheriffs or in the far right sheriff atmosphere and say, hey, would you like to help the Trump administration deport more people? And many of them said, sure.

And so using this anti-immigrant group, the Trump administration recruited more sheriffs to join a program called 287G. And 287G is a federal program that essentially deputizes sheriffs and their deputies to act as immigration agents. So under Trump, many, many more sheriffs joined this 287G program.

Now, the 287G program is a bit interesting because it doesn't include any funding for the sheriffs, but it is something that sheriffs used to say that they were tough on immigration.

Keywords: correctional health, environmental justice, occupational safety, jail architecture, acoustic exposure, structural vibration, detention facilities Abstract Noise and structural vibration are persistent yet poorly documented environmental exposures within U.S. county jails. While research on correctional environments has traditionally focused on overcrowding, sanitation, and air…

How U.S. Marshals Operate Through County Jails, National Databases, and Civilian Contracting Introduction The United States relies on a layered law enforcement model in which federal agencies, local governments, and civilian contractors interact under shared legal authority. At the heart of this framework are Intergovernmental Service Agreements (IGSAs) — contracts that allow the federal…

In Alabama, the county in which you’re arrested could be the deciding factor in who will be financially responsible for your medical bills behind bars.

In Baldwin County, known for its white-sand Gulf Coast beaches and waterfront communities, the sheriff’s office ensures that inmates in the county jail do not have to pay anything more than a $15 copayment for medical care.

“Inmates are not billed for the full cost of any medical care either inside or outside” the jail, Sheriff Hoss Mack said in an email. “Alabama Code Title 14 assigns financial responsibility of inmates’ medical treatment to the department where they are being held.”

Just across the bay in Mobile County, home to one of the busiest ports in the U.S. and the eponymous city of nearly 200,000 people built around it, Sheriff Sam Cochran takes a different tack: Some of his inmates are personally on the hook for the full cost of medically necessary care they receive from outside doctors while incarcerated, even if they are awaiting trial.

Prisons and Jail across the US struggling with heat issues…Take Action!!

Receiving many reports that jails and prisons across the US are having heating issues…with their budgets, this should NOT be an issue. They will allow our incarcerated people to freeze and with the frigid cold and North Eastern Storm moving in, we need to take action NOW.

So far we have reports on the following facilities:

Louisville Metro Corrections temps at 40 degrees. KY DOC has at least one…

California Counties Undermine State Plan to Reduce Prison Crowding

Mandate to Decrease Population

Legislation was passed nearly three years ago in California by Gov. Jerry Brown to bring a sharp decrease in the state prison overcrowding.

The plan was to keep more low-level inmates in county jails for longer periods and saving space in state prisons for violent and sexual offenders. A surge in the number of people being sentenced to serve prison time since the…