The technology at the Pulaski County Justice Center is showing its age. Currently, the sheriff’s department is in the process of upgrading the computer system that controls the doors, after it had a number of glitches in recent weeks. Now, the building’s fire alarm is having similar problems.
Maintenance Supervisor Jeff Johnston told the county commissioners Tuesday the jail has experienced two false alarms recently. Technicians have pinpointed the problem to two faulty computer boards in the alarm panel. But in doing so, Johnston said they also found some issues with the smoke detectors. “Those things are all past their lifespan and they could stop working,” Johnston explained. “All of them could stop working tomorrow or over the next few years. If one of them stops working and we call a technician in to fix it, w pay $190 an hour for them to fix it. We pay $95 for the trip charge, and then 200-and-some dollars for the actual detector itself.”
Johnston said that cost could be brought down significantly by replacing all 50-to-60 smoke detectors at once. He plans to discuss potential costs with the contractor working on the door control system, to help the commissioners come up with a plan.
Sheriff Jeff Richwine told the commissioners there are plans in place for the inmates, in case of an actual fire. “As soon as the alarm happens, they all move,” he said. “We move the females to one recreation side, the males to the other. They all get belly chained. Everybody gets handcuffed up. Every deputy that can come comes into work. And then we put them on buses, move them down to the school, and we’ll either put them in the gym or in the socialtorium, where we can keep control of them until that all happens.”
In spite of these challenges, Richwine said the jail did very well during a recent inspection, but the inspector had some concerns about the jail’s staffing levels. “I think he goes off to say that it’s like 12 people short,” Richwine said. “The other side of that is when you go look at every jail in Indiana, there might be one or two that are properly staffed. So when I first seen it, I though, ‘Holy smokes, you gotta be joking me.’ But when you start checking with other jails – and several of them have done these staffing reports and everybody gets inspected by the state. They almost always say you don’t have enough people.”
Richwine felt that certain staffing recommendations didn’t really apply to facilities as small as Pulaski County’s. “Like our jail commander here, he’ll go do transports. He’ll jump in and go pick up somebody in White County and bring them back. I think what this thing says is he should be there doing jail commander stuff.”
The sheriff said he isn’t recommending any changes to staffing levels at this time.
