Feds blast conditions at Cook County jail

Albert Allen was suffering from a gunshot wound to the arm when he was arrested in 2006. Before he was jailed, an orthopedist treated the wound, inserting metal "hardware" into his arm and scheduling a follow-up visit for the soon-to-be Cook County prisoner.

Allen never made it back.

Cook County Jail "failed to take him to the hospital for his scheduled appointment," says a report issued Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney's office.

Despite fevers, chills, swelling and redness, a lawsuit alleged, jail staff "were deliberately indifferent to Albert's medical needs."

Allen collapsed in the jail and died of sepsis, an easily treatable infection if caught early enough.

"This was a preventable death," said the federal report, which offered up Allen's story as just one example of conditions at the jail that it called unconstitutional. Unprovoked inmate beatings by guards, inmate-on-inmate violence and lackadaisical internal investigations were others examples provided.

But in that highly charged example - and others like it - lies the problem, retorted Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

"The anecdotal stories are what kill me in general about this whole report," said Dart.

Obviously, if the incident occurred as represented, it's unacceptable, Dart said, noting he regularly moves to fire guards who break the rules or abuse prisoners.

But the report's focus on anecdotes rather than hard statistics ignores that change is afoot at the jail, he said.

For instance, the report notes that use of force incidents by guards on prisoners were up significantly in 2007 from the year before, Dart said. What it doesn't note is that in 2008, they are down 22 percent, he said.

Similarly, the report notes that in a one-week period in the spring of 2007, there were 35 inmate fights, 27 uses of force and 46 homemade weapons seized. What it doesn't note, Dart said, was that the overall picture is much rosier. There were 482 shanks recovered in the jail in the first half of 2007, but only 247 in the same period in 2008 after a special program targeting weapons was initiated, Dart said.

"My distress and disappointment in this is they seem to have blinders on in all the very areas that seem to concern them," Dart said.

Dart noted that he has recently brought on former FBI officials to beef up the investigation of abuse complaints, a move that went unheralded in the report, he said.

Much of Dart's responses couldn't be put to federal officials. Despite having the report in hand since July 11, Dart's office issued a written response to the media only late in the afternoon Thursday.

But one problem area identified in the report is remarkable in that it is a perpetual complaint at the jail: understaffing. Despite a 25 percent increase in guards over the past five years, at a cost increase of 32 percent, there are still single guards manning two separate "tiers" at the jail. And the federal investigators found this going on not back in 2006, but in the summer of 2007 when they visited, despite the prohibition of the practice by a federal consent decree.

Dart acknowledged the problem and did not dispute the rise in guards staffing from 2.426 in 2003 to 3,067 authorized positions this year, at a staff cost alone of $163 million, up from $110 million. But he said the problem was so bad for so long, that the massive increase is only now beginning to let jail officials tread water. Even now, Cook County's guard-to-inmate ratio lags behind other big jail systems, such as New York's. Dart would like to see another 800 guards added.

Dart also discounts a spot-check of federal lawsuits filed against the jail as being indicative that problems may be increasing rather than decreasing. In 2007, there were 99 suits filed against the jail, but at this point in 2008, 70 have been filed, a pace that would put the number much higher this year.

Dart said the time period reflected in the suits is often one to two years old, and notes that lawsuits don't necessarily indicate legitimate complaints.

But despite Dart's basic contention that the report was unfair, he vowed to continue to work with federal investigators to resolve problems at the jail, a commitment the report itself heralded, noting Dart had given investigators unfettered access.

Federal investigators said their report does not mark the end of their involvement.

"We wouldn't just have these findings and then go away," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joan Laser. "Working out how to solve these problems isn't something that's going to take a week."