Marshall County Jail Tour Part One

(MUSIC). We're going to have

Chief...

Jail Administrator, Joel Phillips, give us a program about—

kind of event and now about—the Sheriff's office,

and how the facility works, the jail, et cetera.

How they got to be out here and not in town,

and then we'll have to break into groups for some tours

and they'll prompt you for questions

at appropriate times. Welcome.

All

right. Thank you.

All right, folks,

I want to thank you for coming out and showing interest

in the facility, the Marsh County Sheriff's office, the complex,

and for having us to put on the third Thursdays for the historical society.

I

got a little bit of an itinerary to keep on task.

But I'll kind of start out with

just to kind of give like a brief overview on how we came to this facility, here in,

in Jessup Avenue out in the county.

When Sheriff

Comanche was appointed sheriff in 1988,

the current sheriff or the outgoing sheriff, Bud Gonzalez,

he ran the jail, on South Second Avenue.

During that time,

there was millions of dollars in litigation just involving the jail facility.

They were housing 36 prisoners when it was only state certified to hold nine.

They were going to shut down the jail.

And part of the duties of a sheriff is to have a jail, to run the county jail.

So what sheriff Comanche

just did, he had a committee and he began to put together

a program to build a new complex.

So, this happened in 1988.

In the meantime, it had been, throughout the years, we've been housing prisoners,

our county prisoners out of state.

We would have deputies,

reserve deputies, part-time transportation officers actually drive from

one end of the state to the other,

from border and border, East and West, just to find the

housing for the prisoners here.

So,

with

that,

it was costing Marshall County taxpayers about $350,000 a

year to house our prisoners out of our county.

I think we've actually had airplanes;

we would rent airplanes to get like up to Cherokee, Pottawattamie

County to house these prisoners.

And that was all part of the jail not being in compliance.

When we talk about compliance,

we are regulated by the State of Iowa, it's Chapter 50.

A lot...

Even a lot of law enforcement officers don't understand what Chapter 50 is,

but it's the state mandated rules for a jail facility.

And, of course, it comes with all different regulations.

We are inspected once a year by the state jail inspector.

We have our certain requirements we have to meet

and then we get a rating within the state.

I'm happy to say that jail ministers,

jail administrators prior to me with the good staff,

we've had excellent ratings

since then.

So,

what this committee was doing was they were putting a bond referendum

to build a new jail, sheriff's office complex, a new jail.

1998, it started,

it failed the first time. It was bond referendum.

I'm not exactly sure the amount that they were asking for.

It ran a second time and so far it's been the highest passage

of a bond referendum in Marshall County.

It passed almost 85%.

It was $3.9 million what we were awarded to build a complex here.

So,

what we started to do is we got some costs,

Sheriff Comanches and the staff toured the country,

the United States to come up with a plan, a design,

to

build a modern facility that would not only serve

our needs at the current time in 1999,

but also into the future.

We're going on our 16th year of being open.

We still have agencies come to our facility to see

the design and they're actually modeled after our facility.

We're very fortunate that we had a lot of insight within the community

professionals that when we did get our facility built.

And as we kind of go through the tour,

you'll see different things and you may ask questions why it's this way

and we'll kind of stop and we'll talk about that

and we'll kind of go over that. But

when they moved out here, part of the reason for

the bond referendum passing was because it was repurposing

a building, a facility that the county already owned.

I remember when I was a young child coming out to see

my great grandmother,

she was housed out here when I was in the Marshall County Care Facility.

In fact, on the third floor,

it was the first elevator ride I've ever taken

in my life was actually to come up here.

So, it was kind of neat,

and then some of those memories burned into my mind, but

there were three buildings. The current building was built in 1963,

this building right here.

This building was the best one out of the three,

that I believe it

wasn't the original building on this site that was built and

I believe in 1870, I think that one burnt down.

But if off to our west, there was another administrative building,

that building was beyond repair.

And what they did was they demolished that building,

instead of taking the debris

to the landfill,

what they did was they repurposed that and that is actually our

berm for our firing range, and it made a perfect backstop.

They just basically moved it about 100 yards off to the northwest,

and so that serves as our berm for our firing range.

The second building that was in 1919 or 1917,

I'm not sure exactly when that was, that was demolished in 2011.

Up until then we had the fortunate opportunity to use that for training,

we had state tactical teams use that. We used it for

other agencies on different responses, scenario force on force training,

and it got to be where

it

became a safety and risk hazard to use that for training. So 2011,

the board of supervisors voted to demolish that building also,

and that was at a cost about $106,000, I believe.

So, it was quite expensive just

to remove that building, which we planted trees over the last few years.

Obviously this site, we also share, it's a 31-acre site.

We share this with the Mid-Iowa

Antique Power Association. You'll see a couple times a year

they have events out here that

they use the grounds for. It's been a great relationship,

and they have their meetings up here. So,

we've been fortunate to have this building here.

When we talk about the 1963 building, the current building we're in,

it's roughly not quite 40,000 square feet with the four levels.

There is a basement that we use for training.

We won't take the tour tonight into the basement area, but

there's about $50,000 worth of exercise equipment for our staff that we use.

It's been purchased with drug seizures, drug money.

So, we repurpose that money in our

forfeitures for the betterment

of the agency and the officers and the jail staff.

We'll

be taking the tour over in the new building,

It's about 25,000 square foot facility.

It's

a solid concrete.

You'll notice that there are no windows until you go into the

housing units.

We won't go into the housing units for obvious reasons.

But we use natural light, skylights.

So it brings a lot of natural light in the facility

and reduce costs.

We talk about reducing costs. We are fortunate to have Lucas Badke. He is here.

He's our Marshall County buildings and grounds. You can raise your hand

Lucas. Don't be shy.

(LAUGHTER) He's

out here with the tour with us tonight.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask him.

Lucas has been kind of an innovator.

He's currently going through the LED retrofitting of this facility.

I don't

know the exact number, but it's going to save the county thousands of dollars

in cost and electricity by converting over to LED lighting,

and it's been a progress. Luke has been really hard at it, so

I want to thank you for that.

When

we talk about...

We'll,

go with the sheriff's office first.

We talk about a police officer or police department.

The police department is basically,

has jurisdiction in a city or municipality.

With the sheriff's office, we have several duties,

we're officers of the court, we provide law enforcement duties to the citizens

of the county.

We also are a mandate to run the jail facility.

And then we also are civil servants. We execute civil processes.

So, as a deputy sheriff, as a sheriff's office, we have a lot of duties,

and tonight we're going to mainly talk about the jail facility.

We got about a little over $6 million budget that

we have dedicated to the jail facility,

it's been working very well.

Right now, we have,

28 civilian jailers that work in the jail facility.

We're down a couple of employees for retirements and

moving on to different careers.

We have 21 spots for sworn deputies. That means they're highly a certified

that includes the sheriff which is elected.

With the police chief, they're appointed by the mayor. With the sheriff,

they're elected by the citizens of the county.

It's been

a little bit of a transition over the last several years from

certified deputies running the jail are actually working in the jail.

Law

enforcement professionals have seen, you just don't go around,

check the doors, make sure they're locked and count inmates.

Jailer duties have been involving quite rapidly over the last few years.

I've been an administrator for two years now and even in the last two years,

it's changed quite a bit.

With what is being taxed of the jails in Iowa and across the United States,

we're seeing a lot of mental health problems come in,

which

creates a whole new problem for our jail staff.

They commit crimes, and they really need the help.

They need the mental health help,

and we only can provide so much.

We

talk a little bit about the differences between a prison and a jail. In a prison,

the inmates of the prisoners have been convicted in a court of law

through the judicial process, they've been found guilty.

In a jail,

we have individuals that have been criminally charged,

they're presumed innocent until found guilty or

innocent until proven guilty.

We have some that have been sentenced, awaiting to go to prisons,

so we have to treat everybody that's here as an innocent person.

That's a little bit of the difference between

a prison and a jail.

When

it comes to

medications, we can't make an inmate take medications, it's up to them.

They're basically a citizen, they're just confined in an area,

so they have certain rights as an inmate of a county jail.

And,

then we get a lot of questions on

what's the average stay in a county jail.

It's really hard to tell just for those reasons.

By

law, an individual only can be sentenced to a county jail for up to one year.

Now

we have people, for instance, we have had a gentleman here,

it was the last criminal case that I worked,

one of the last ones before I came into the jail division.

That was in April of 2014. He just went to prison

about two months ago.

He'd been here a little almost 2.5 years.

And that kind of depends on

where he's at in the court process as far as appeals, continuing processes.

And

there could be somebody here that comes out,

spends the night, and then we won't see them again.

So, there's quite a variety of different

people that do show up at our facility.

When we talk about misdemeanors, Iowa has three misdemeanors.

Simple, serious, and aggravated,

The maximum

penalty for a serious misdemeanor is 30 days,

serious is up to one year, and aggravated misdemeanor is up to two years.

And then we get into the felonies. Felonies are 5 years,

10, 15, and 25 depending on the severity of the offense.

At

our facility,

we house anybody that's been charged for criminal mischief,

For a simple assault all the way up to robbers, sexual assault,

sexual deviant individuals, and then murderers.

We do house murders in our facility.

When

I talk a little bit about our facility,

we have a maximum capacity of 182

inmates.

So when you think of 182 people, that's just the inmates,

you're talking the size of Haverhill, the size of Ferguson,

the size of Green Mountain.

So you're talking... It's literally a city confined

in this area.

Right

now I think our population is about 127 inmates, so

we're down just, we're about average for this time of year.

A lot of times,

we see our population drop because we start to get into the holidays,

and then it'll pick up after the first of the year, but generally

we run pretty well around 145 inmates.

We have, like I said, 28 jailers on staff.

We have a minimum personnel that we run our shifts in.

Typically, our ratio is one jailer to 20 inmates.

That's kind about what we run.

And

as you go through and see a little bit how things work,

you'll understand that our jailers

have specific duties, they're well rehearsed.

They're trained through ILEA, they're certified jailers. From the date of hire,

they have one year

to be certified by the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy.

It's a 40-hour certification course which is not nearly long enough

in my mind. But we do continue the training for our jailers.

They're required to do at least 20 hours

for recertification every year.

They're trained on how to use weapons. They're trained on first aid.

They are first responders. They're trained on mental first aid,

through the legal process,

court transports, restraints.

It's a wide variety of different topics that they do cover.

Civil rights is a big issue.

It is one of the biggest liabilities that we have is to make sure

everyone's rights

and needs are met, and that's part of the duty

of the sheriff's office for a jail.

We

do house federal prisoners.

When I talk about our population is 127,

I don't know the exact number right now. I looked at it little bit ago,

but

about

50 are Marshall County prisoners.

Right now, we're housing 60 federal prisoners.

Those are federal detainees from immigration,

customs, and enforcement.

A

lot

of times that we've seen across the United States that

jails at times, there's a potential for revenue for the area where they're at.

Right now we do hold the federal contract and a county jail to hold federal

detainees.

And

for us to do that, they have to meet certain criteria.

It's administrative hold, it's not a criminal offense.

They've had to been previously deported

from the United States, and they've had to commit a specific offense,

generally those are felony offenses or above, that means they've committed,

something that can be imprisoned up to five years and

it's a pretty serious offense.

That's the criteria that

ICE uses that we can hold them in our facility.

And then when we talk about revenue

right

now, we're talking

right around $0.5 million revenue for Marshall County.

So, you see the impact that has within our county that goes into the general fund.

It doesn't stay at the sheriff's office, that goes into for County services.

So,

the potential is there obviously, but

we also have to meet certain criteria at federal levels for certification.

Every year we go through, we call a federal inspection.

That means we have federal inspectors come in

and we have to meet guidelines and they're very strict on those.

It goes anywhere from medical, food service,

procedures and policies to grievances.

When we talk about grievances, inmate disagreements,

commissary telephone visitations.

There's about 40 standards that we have to meet and we have to meet them all.

So,

with that there's a price.

So, we're doing really good with that so far.

When I talk about staff, we have a full-time medical director, a doctor,

and we have two full-time nurses and one part-time nurse.

As you go through the facility,

you'll see that this is basically a community within inside a community.

We have anywhere from mail service—jailers handle the mail.

They scan the mails

to make sure there's no contraband that comes through there.

We handle legal correspondence between attorneys

and their defendants and their clients.

We hold services for Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous.

We have religious ceremonies.

We have batterers courses for victims and the offenders.

Like I said, all religious ceremonies, we have,

I think 17 different religious menus.

If someone comes in that claims a religious menu,

we have to be able to provide that for them.

We talk about meal service. Right now, it's costing us about $2 a meal per inmate.

And then

it may not seem like a lot. But,

I

think today we contract out our food service with a

secondary company.

They've served over 2.7 million meals since they've been

here at the opening of 2000.

We're running about 12,000 meals a month.

So,

it's quite the process, and if anybody's been out here

when it was a county home,

the kitchen is all original. There's been some modification,

some coolers have been added,

and then obviously some of the equipment has been updated, but

they fix all their meals out here.

All the bread is made daily

from our kitchen staff.

So, it's good to come in the mornings and you smell fresh bread. (LAUGHTER).

I mean, it just makes you hungry. (LAUGHTER).

One of the things that they're

proud of, the kitchen staff, is the original wooden cutting board,

that's still in place.

That's one of the,

last things that's original, kind of down there as far as equipment.

If I can kind of keep on track with everything...

And

then we talk about meals. Everybody says the jail food is terrible.

We don't get enough, it's based on a 3100-calorie a day.

If you know that the adults,

they are... Most of our inmates, they actually gain weight while they're here.

The food is really good.

The staff eat the food, not all the food that the

inmates eat, but we do eat here.

We do have a cafeteria and a salad bar for the staff,

because

obviously we cannot leave our posts.

We take our lunch breaks and we can get them and then we get back to work.

So,

a couple of different programs that you may have heard of in the community

is we do have a work release program.

If someone has been convicted of a crime,

they have an option for a work release.

We want that individual

to maintain employment.

So, we work with the court system, we work with the individual and the employers.

Basically, how that works is once they meet the requirements,

they will go ahead and go to work

just like anybody else, like a normal citizen would do,

and they would come to the jail

after their work and then they would be checked in,

they would be fed, and they get

their bed and then in the morning they get up, and they go back to work.

So, it's just basically a stay at the jail

and that's when our work release program. We have an

AIP program which is an alternative to incarceration program.

You may have seen some of the workers around the courthouse on the weekends.

What that is individuals been convicted to serve

a certain amount of time. A lot of times we see

24 hours, 48 hours, or 72 hours convictions where they have to do either

operating while intoxicated or

a domestic, where they have to serve a certain amount of time.

What they'll do is, they come to the jail,

they check in with our work release coordinator or

the

AIP coordinator,

and

then they are assigned to a specific area for

the day and they're watched by a jail staff.

They basically go into an organization,

whether it's a nonprofit or if it's a county organization

and they

provide cleaning services, some labors, some mow yards,

pickup leaves, rake leaves, trash.

For instance, what that program is saving is when they go to

the courthouse,

it was costing the county about

80 to $100,000 a year for janitorial services at the courthouse.

The

AIP workers take care of that.

So, you kind of see the incentive and the

cost savings that these programs that they save.

When we talk about the operations at the jail,

feeding that many meals, you know, 12,000 meals a month.

We

have kitchen trustees

and what they do is

they can sign up if they meet the minimum requirements for employment

through our trustee system,

and they have to meet some physical standards.

They come down and they work in the kitchen, they actually prepare the meals,

they serve the meals and they clean the areas

and that's a kitchen trustee.

Then we have Laundy trustees, they actually do the laundry for the inmates.

Then we have the janitorial trustees that actually clean the facility,

the common areas.

And

what they get for the incentive is that they're not charged room and board.

For every

day that they serve as a trustee,

they get a day and a half credit off their sentence.

So, there is some incentive there.

Unfortunately, it's the workforce out in the public.

It's hard to get people to work sometimes.

So, we run into that

and

those are some of the hurdles that we to overcome.

If I can introduce you guys, we'll be going through the jail,

Supervisor Wendel Millheiser.

He is level two supervisor. We do not have rank in the jail.

Like I talked before, we have civilian jailers.

I am the only certified deputy in the jail.

Wendell

is almost like a lieutenant if we would have lieutenant in the jail.

Same thing with Supervisor White.

Supervisor White, he has been here for 17-1/2 years.

So, he actually started out at the old jail and then transitioned over here.

He's got a lot of knowledge.

So feel free to ask Supervisor White any questions.

You know, I talked about the litigations.

One of the things that

give you an example of how bad the jail was is they

thought there was a dirt floor in a certain section of the jail.

It was just

the dirt build up, there was nine inches of dirt build up on a concrete floor.

So, you kind of see how they've transitioned to this facility.

(LAUGHTER)

We do pride ourselves on the cleanliness of our facility.

As we go through, it's going to spark

some conversations and some questions.

As far as we don't have a lot of diseases come through here

that are transmitted and you might say the flu colds.

We have an air system that exchanges the rate

in all the cells, 68 times a minute or an hour.

All that fresh air is being pumped in and the exhaled air,

the old air is being pumped out.

So we have a really good

luck with isolation of any diseases.

Medical staff does a real good screen on the individuals that come in,

and if we have somebody that has a problem, we isolate them

in a medical isolation and then we take care of them that way.

You may hear about the benefits that they receive.

The inmates are taken care of very well

with the dental and health care. That does come at a cost. They pay for that.

A lot of people don't realize that the problem that we have on our end is

getting reimbursed for that.

But there's ways through the court that we use to recoup those costs.

They pay for their food, they pay for their housing,

they pay for their medical costs.

So everything here, a lot of people

may think that it's free when they come to jail, it's not free when you come to jail.

We charge our county inmates $30 a day.

Anybody that comes to jail, it's $30 a day.

So.

it's not a Hilton, but they are taken care of very well, I must say.

Yeah.

You charge $30 a day, instead they don't have any money. How do you get the money?

That's a good question, Dan.

What that is is when they leave here, we fill out a room and board sheet.

That sheet is filed with the clerk of court and State of Iowa Marshall County.

So anytime there's restitution paid,

they have to pay on those fines and it's collected either through

their tax returns

and incentives like that.

Our return on a dollar,

I would like it to be better, but we do get some funds

back.

But,

so...

(INAUDIBLE)

Yes.

To participate in the work release program and AIP program,

one of the requirements is they have to pay for the room and board in advance.

So, we have the room and board before they are even approved for that. So

anybody that does the work release, they are paid.

Anybody else real quick? The ratio of men and women.

Right now we're roundabout,

I could be off on my numbers exactly about 13 to 14 women.

and then our men that were in, you know, in the upper eighties, nineties.

Typically,

we have less women.

We do house juveniles. We are certified to house juveniles.

Most of our juveniles are out of county. Polk County.

We house them and then Scott County.

So, most of the time if you hear a juvenile that's been on the news.

in Polk County, they're coming here.

And

the reason for that is they have a juvenile hall, Mayer Hall

and

if they meet a certain requirement,

if the fence is so severe that they can't be put into a group home,

they have to hold them in a facility.

And

holding juveniles is a very difficult certification,

you have to meet certain requirements.

We're fortunate enough to have those, we meet those requirements.

So instead of staffing a whole wing, I think,

their wing holds 100 juveniles, but the problem is the cost for them

to man and meet the requirements that's set forth by the state to monitor,

house those juveniles.

It's more cost effective to have them shipped out to other facilities that are

As you see as we walk through,

we're set up fairly well.

Adults,

we

have to at least have physical eyes on.

We have to see that person every hour.

But our policies, we man mandate,

we see them every hour. So every hour we're going to

see and have contact with that individual. With juveniles,

it's every 30 minutes.

So you can kind of see the different requirements

when it comes to juveniles and adults.

So, Yes.

Is the

doctor here all the time?

He is contracted. He does rounds once a week. If we have an emergency, he will show up.

Our

nurses are here 24 hours. Well, I shouldn't say they're here

about 16 hours a day and then they're on-call 24 hours.

Most of the time if we have a medical emergency,

a lot of times we use the ambulance or first responders to transport them

to the hospital.

We've had

anything from childbirth. We've had people give birth here.

And unfortunately we have had deaths in our jail.

Those are far and few between. I think it's been

at least 15 years,

since the last one, and it was suicide.

Sometimes we try to do everything. When we go down,

you'll see

how we deal with the suicidal subjects and how we prevent that,

how we protect them.

But sometimes we just can't,

if someone wants to do that,

it's,

hard to stop.

Have they ever

faked anything, (VOICE OVERLAPPING)

Oh, yes!

Yes. (LAUGHTER)

Redonda Bracy, she's our senior nurse,

she's been in the corrections healthcare for quite a while.

There's

a big difference between correctional healthcare

and healthcare for citizens.

Our other nurse, Stacey Bachus,

she's been here for about two years.

She had a very difficult time.

As

a medical provider, you want to help somebody.

When you come out to a correction facility, they want something,

whether they're injured or not,

they will do anything, they'll manipulate

to get what they want.

So, a lot of times they would fake seizures and

the fake illnesses

and a lot of times it has to do with addiction unfortunately. So,

there's

certain medications that we use in the

medical correction area,

and there's some that we try to avoid but we do

look out for that. It is very

difficult.

I think,

we've had one

fake a pregnancy (LAUGHTER) and a

miscarriage,

seizures, heart attacks, you name it.

But, the nurses do a very good job

of determining whether it's actually real or fabricated.

(INAUDIBLE). Right now we have a contract with Hy-Vee.

We

contact with them, so every day, we make a

pharmaceutical run and we get medications.

Our

nursing staff

has a big task. A lot of times with the individuals that come out here, they're,

either abusing medications or they're not taking their medications,

and that kind of leads a little bit into the mental health,

issue that we're having.

We have one inmate that he committed a criminal offense.

It was not

violent, but it was a criminal offense and it warranted arrest.

And

six months later,

we found out that it was from his medications.

He wasn't taking his psychotic meds.

He started to digress and he committed a criminal offense.

Once, he got back on those medications, the nursing and staff had

gotten him straightened out.

He was a totally different person.

I think the monthly bill for those medications was around $3000

and somebody that's unemployed, homeless,

they can't afford those type of medications.

Unfortunately, then it comes back

once they're in the

judicial system into the corrections, the prisons, the jails,

it falls on the taxpayers,

unfortunately.

But

that's kind of the

vicious circle of health care.

Yeah.

Since we're going to get a new sheriff for the first time in decades,

Will that affect any of the staffing?

I

mean, your employments

take care?

Not sure.

In part. Yeah.

Depending since this is a new cycle for a sheriff,

Sheriff Comanches

was not running for re-election; obviously that he made that known.

We have the potential of having it. We will have a new sheriff.

That's up to the sheriff to make the changes of the agency.

Myself, I'm in administration.

I'm third in command of the sheriff's office.

If he doesn't want me as a chief jail inspector,

I'm not a chief jail inspector.

However, we are civil service deputies,

we are protected in the civil service.

So there's certain areas that he can move us

with

the jail staff. There is a union organization

through a bargaining unit agreement.

So, they are protected,

except for Pat and Wendell, they are administration. They moved over to salary.

The bargaining unit, when we talk about unions, they've done a very good job

of filling that

gap

between

hourly and salaries.

Administration is the only employees right now that are salary.

It's very difficult

to have someone that's

qualified to move up into administration just for the mere fact that

I think

Wendell probably took a pay cut the amount of hours that he puts in.

He gets paid salary.

He's required to work 40 hours a week.

I know Wendell works at least 50 to 60 guaranteed

and the same with the supervisor, White and myself.

If we

don't do it, it doesn't get done.

So, we realized that there is a service here.

We work for the public, the citizens of Marshall County.

We're very fortunate to have a good dedicated staff

to make sure those services get taken care of.

So,

yeah. It could be a whole new ball game.

He can come in and do different policies and procedures.

We talk about housing federal inmates. The new sheriff may not want to do that.

It's

his budget. He will spend it how he ses sees fit.

But...

So,

on those same lines,

is there

any input from

the staff

What the sheriff does?

Yeah. A lot of times, obviously, we hadn't had a change in sheriff in

30 years,

almost 30 years.

But, from my experience, there's a lot of times,

the incoming sheriff

will rely on the staff that's present to kind of get an overview,

especially if it's a sheriff that's been detached.

We all know that, Randy Price is running against Steve Hoffman.

Steve's been here for 25 years. He kind of knows how it runs.

Randy has also been here, but a lot of times that's kind of up to us as

employees of Marshall County that

inform that incoming sheriff on how things operate.

And what we feel best and some input,

but generally it's input from employees

and it's a cooperation of everyone and make sure

all the needs are met.

So...

Did I

understand it right

When you said that the sheriff's deputies take care of the county

and then the police department takes care in Marshalltown?

Why do we see sheriff deputies appearing to be doing

functioning in the city area? Because I have

noticed that...

Yeah. The city falls in the city of Marshalltown.

A lot of times when we talked about the civil service,

basically original papers, garnishments, writs,

evictions,

that's part of the civil processes.

and a lot of those do happen in Marshalltown.

We do assist Marshalltown with law enforcement duties.

We're certified

and authorized to go anywhere in the state.

By our policy, we're confined to Marshall County and five miles beyond.

We

all know that crime has no boundaries.

So, a lot of times,

if we're doing civil processes in Marshalltown,

we can be doing joint programs and we can also be doing enforcement also.

We

do have where we get our fuel that's in the city.

So there's different, various reasons, we travel through there.

We make it known that we are in the area. So,

if I answered your question

(INDISTINCT)

and like they were doing,

I wondered if it was

illegal people

or something like that was getting picked up by me.

In a lot of times when talking about civil processes too, we do make

mental commitments, civil commitments.

A lot of times if a

family

member or a concerned person petitions the

court for mental or substance abuse evaluations.

We get those orders through the court,

and then it's up to us.

It's our duty to locate these individuals and make contact and take them

into custody and make sure they get to where they need to

go whether it's another health care facility

or a substance abuse evaluation.

So, we have a lot of different duties that take us throughout our travels.

Yes.

I noticed in the paper when there's a property transfer that some of it is from

the county sheriff to

to what it could be a bank or another property place.

Why doesn't the county attorney handle things like that instead of

the sheriff? I'm sure there is a reason.

Yeah, that is the part of the duty of

the civil processes of the sheriff.

We do have sheriff's auctions

if an individual or firm is default on their property taxes.

We do take those properties and we hold the sheriff sales,

depending on how many we have day of the week,

we actually facilitate the sale of real property.

Many of you may know back in the eighties, it was one of the,

the tough times in agriculture

where a lot of agricultural businessmen

and farmers overextended themselves.

That was one of the difficult tasks of the sheriff's office to actually go out

and execute those services.

So, we would actually take possession of property and we would hold it for sale.

It's

a hard time for everybody during that. So,

it's one of the duties of a sheriff.

Yeah.

If somebody is arrested

like in the evening, is he arraigned the next day. Yes, he will have his initial...

Is that the video?

Yes, it is.

And is all of the video or...

Yes.

Depending

on the time of the day and the availability of the judges,

anybody that comes to our facility,

they have a peace officer to be directed

to take an arrestee directly to the most accessible magistrate.

A lot of times,

say separate times, say now if someone's picked up, arrested criminally on

an arrest warrant,

there's

not a magistrate, we don't have night court, so

we're kind of the temporary holding facility for Marshalltown

Police Department. They bring their prisoners out to us,

we intake them, we book them in

and then they will see the judge in the morning right around 8:30.

And when we go on the tour,

we'll show you the courtroom where it actually happens at the public viewing area.

We'll kind of show you the process of if someone's arrested,

kind of, what happens

if

they're held after initials within 24 hours,

what happens to them and actually going into the population

in the services that we can provide? So we'll kind of go through that.

Is

the city charged for that

time of that

stay?

No.

They are not charged with that.

That's the service that we provide. The Marshalltown is in is in Marshall County.

That

individual is charged for that room and board.

There's been some talk about

over the advances over the last couple of years we've entered into

implemented a joint records management system.

That's what all of our records, anything that happens gets documented,

everybody knows it is documentation, documentation, documentation.

We have a jail RMS Records management system and then we have a

sheriff's office

management system that has to do with the criminal, the civil processes,

the invoices, the expenses

and now Marshalltown is on that same system. So, we're a lot connected.

We're

using a lot of our services together from

a municipality or a city to the sheriff's office.

We're kind of combining our resources.

So,

with that system,

there

had been a time before where the police department,

if someone is arrested and it was an indictable offense,

they need to have their picture taken and they need to have fingerprints.

They would do that process at the police department,

then they would transfer their prisoner out to us.

Now, everything's done at our facility.

So, it's kind of streamlining some things a little bit.

And then we go down the booking area, you'll kind of see some of the technology,

almost like the CSI effect,

some of the equipment that we have and how it's helping solve crimes,

not starting at the jail level, the intake level.

But

you

see

happening

when Marshalltown gets their own police department jail..

(INAUDIBLE)

I,

don't think so. I really don't think so.

I think we'll still be in, we'll work very well together.

If

you haven't toured the police department,

they really need it, they are really

great. It was

every time I go in there either they are repairing the pipes or electrical wiring. And

that's part of the reason why Kim Elder with the emergency management

agency is out here.

She was in the basement and frankly

she got tired of the sewer backing up and flooding her office.

So,

we, kind of, come into a joint agreement that

Kim would move out here to the sheriff's office.

She's down at the end of the hall.

It was actually a great fit. She's in the center of the county.

So whenever emergency strikes she can be deployed, she's got trailers,

more centrally.

As far as communications,

our building has the towers on top of it for the emergency,

the ham radio operators.

They have an antenna out here. So,

to answer your question, I don't think it's going to affect the services

any differently.

Yeah,

I'm

not that sure. He moved out here and they might keep a few in there.

I

think the cost for them to have a temporary...

Even a temporary holding facility

is quite a cost. Say, West Des Moines,

they are certified temporary holding facility.

So, if their officer arrests somebody out on the street,

they can take them to the police department and they can hold them there for 24 hours.

Now, part of that requirement

is all of their officers have to be Jailer Certified.

That means they have to all go through the 40-hour certification.

They have to do their 20 hours a yearly to keep up on a Jailer certification

and the facility has to meet the state requirements,

it has to be inspected as a regular facility.

I don't think cost would... As close as we are,

I don't think they

would go down that avenue, that approach to have

a temporary holding facility.

They may have a sell in there

for a combative person maybe.

I'm not sure of the design and how that is,

but they have to meet the same requirements as we would have.

It would almost be in my opinion very difficult

to meet those financial obligations for a smaller agency.

Oh, yeah.

Does Polk County still send a lot of their general population up here

or are they able to? I know they built a new jail and they stopped sending to them, but

is their jail full and they're sending them back? Their jail is not full.

Right now, we're only holding the juveniles and it was more or less a financial

burden on Polk County.

Right

now, I think we only have one Polk County juvenile.

So for them to staff a 100-bed

wing, it's basically a wing of the jail

for them to staff that for one juvenile.

It's,

more cost efficient for them to pay someone else to watch that

juvenile.

(INAUDIBLE).

Yes, it was.

(INAUDIBLE).

As soon as they got that new jail built

that kind of dropped off pretty dramatically.

I was

one of the deputies that would make the transportation run for that.

And it was

quite a bit in that revenue, we do house for other counties.

Marshall

County has kind of the history

if there isn't a county jail that we can handle an inmate or able to deal or

provide the needs,

they come to us.

Our staff is very well trained, they know how to handle these individuals.

So,

if there is a problem inmate, they do come to us and, of course,

there's a cost with that.

And we pass that cost on to the agency, so

it's,

very difficult. The only other option,

if a county jail is having a problem with an inmate,

the only other option is a state facility

and you're talking at least,

I think, the last bid was $150 a day to house that individual.

If they're a problem inmate, we charge $70 a day,

that's just for the extra staff that we need.

It does generate some revenue, but it comes with its cost.

I mean that inmate is

very difficult and our staff has been really good. If we have an inmate,

that's been a problem in one facility.

A lot of it comes down on the design of the facility and the training of

the corrections officer, the jailer.

We've had in facilities come to us say "We cannot handle this person."

They're just combative, they're angry, they're tearing everything up.

They've come here and we haven't had a problem with them.

I think, a lot of it is

on

the personality, the respect, like the staff tell

inmates when they come in here, "We're going to treat you, as you treat us."

"If you treat us with respect, we'll treat you with respect."

A lot of this you'll see is direct supervision

or a direct supervision jail.

For an example, our

male general population holds 78 males in our housing.

There's one jailer in there. He's actually in the housing unit

with 78

male prisoners.

What

Sheriff Comanches has found out is

that direct supervision, that face-to-face contact

is you can solve their problem and there's less problems that arise

if you're talking to them

face-to-face instead of talking through

bars or pushing a button through a speaker.

So, a lot of the resolution occurs with that face-to-face

contact between staff and the inmates.

So,

yeah.

How big is the new facility?

They got

quite a few

prisoners.

Did they all go back.

Didn't they shift down there?

Yes, they did.

In fact, Newton Facility has been designated

the state of Iowa,

sexual

predator,

sex abuser housing units.

I don't know what their population is now but that's...

(INAUDIBLE)

It's...

And,

we talk about people that want to get into the profession,

it's become such a specific profession.

You have to be trained in certain areas

and you have to be good at it.

The

DOC is down, they're having a hard time getting people to work.

I know they're down at least 100 in Newton, Jailers.

It's a long, hard work.

You come in, you deal with the same people and it's

so—unfortunately sometimes you get a dim outlook on society because

you're kind of dealing with the worst.

But then there's also, on the other hand, there is some good stories.

We've had...

A female came in,

it was about a year and a half ago.

She was pregnant, didn't have any prenatal care,

and we actually had three jailers deliver the baby.

And then what we do is we have to facilitate along with the DHS

and other family members the care of that child because

obviously we can have a child in the facility.

And one of the jailers that delivered the

baby actually gets a Christmas card from the foster family who

got the baby end up getting adopted.

It does have its good stories

and we're in the community, we're out in the

the shopping centers out in the public.

We are approached by

people that been here. We ask them how they're doing.

They let us know and they come up and they thank us. You know,

that kind of comes down to what the staff and how they treat

the inmates.

Well, you may be taking care of one person in the jail one day,

but yet you may be talking with them out on the street the next,

so I think it's a lot of that respect that goes back and forth. So

gets

kind of a two-way street.

So

you,

talk about the

papers that you deal with

prisoners as well. What about voting? And can they vote unless they're convicted?

If they are a convicted felon, they are prohibited to vote.

Their voting rights will have to be petitioned and granted

a pardon by the governor. We have a lot of people who are not convicted.

That is correct. Yep.

We have them available to do absentee ballots,

if they wish to do that.

So if

they want to vote they can vote, they just have to request an absentee.

(INAUDIBLE)

Yes

How

much time do you spend in court?

not

necessarily you, but...

We

have court every day.

A lot

of times we try and limit the transportation with

the ICM and the video visitation.

We're working with the judicial system to kind of cut back

on the transportation.

Depending

on the certain type of a hearing.

bond reviews, we try and get them taken care of out here.

That means if someone has been mandated to post a bond

every 10 days, they have a bond review.

And

a lot of times that's handled between the

defense attorneys and it's through the

television, through video court.

Really,

the only time is if it's a suppression hearing,

if it's any actual hearing in front of a judge or jury,

those

are about the only times that we're actually in court.

Unless the judge wants to speak with the defendant,

he'll order us to transport him in and stuff like that. But

arraignments, sentencing, guilty pleas, those have to be done in person,

those are mandated by the Iowa code.

They have to physically be present when

stuff like that's happening.

So,

typically Mondays and Fridays are our busy days with court.

Usually, from the weekend, try and get things wrapped up from the

week before the weekend.

So,

trials

they can last, you know, depending on the type of it

anywhere from 30 days, it may last a day.

So it just kind of depends on the offense and the attorneys.

Would it make sense to build a courthouse or actual court

out here?

We're kind of at the mercy of the judicial system.

We're in the second judicial district.

That's kind of up to the state of Iowa and the chief judge.

He mandates a lot of that

to

kind of give everyone a heads up.

We're going to be hearing a lot about courthouse security.

States mandated that

all counties make improvements to their courthouses

to provide security. We obviously know the tragedies

around the United States and unfortunately,

there's some things that happened here in Iowa.

We're working with the judges,

the county attorneys, and then the buildings and grounds,

I mean, that's a big task for Lucas.

Information technologies,

a lot of technology needs to be put into these decisions.

The historical society, you know, the courthouse

is a very historic building.

So, it's going to take a lot of work with

a lot of different organizations and agencies

to maintain that service.

We

talk about the courthouse typically

3rd and 5th floors are for court proceedings. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd is for the public.

It's your courthouse as citizens.

We

have to kind of balance within the community,

security, and access to the public.

So that's one thing that's a balancing act.

And

that's up to the board of supervisors, buildings and grounds,

the sheriff's office, county attorneys, and a lot of different organizations.

Are

we good for now>

When we go up to the end of the control center, we call it the control room.

And if anybody has any disabilities or physical

ailments that they cannot make it up, it's kind of a

small winding staircase.

So, we'll have to walk some steps on that part.

Just let us know and we can make those arrangements.

What that is, is our control officer, once we get up there,

I'll ask that you guys going to be quiet and

we can talk down the hall a little bit that one person runs this whole facility.

We have one person that can run everything.

And once you get up there, you'll see the

skill that it takes to do that.

I do not touch the control board because you'll see it and

you'll understand.

So

that control person monitors.

Lucas, how many cameras we have this facility? Roughly.

(INAUDIBLE) So they got to watch 84 cameras

and staff, movement trustees, they got a lot, answer the phone, answer the radio,

and then run records management system to our population.

You'll see

what it takes to be a control officer; it's a lot.

Anything

else Pat that I'm missing.

Oh, if anybody is claustrophobic,

you're

going to get disorientated.

You'll get turned around. If anybody is disorientated, feels ill, lightheaded,

let one of us know we'll take you out

into more of an area where it's not quite as confined.

We have had some individuals that have taken the tour that

they hear the door slamming, that's concrete. They just get...

They're overwhelmed and they need fresh air.

We'll get you guys there if that's what it takes.

(LAUGHTER).

No. It's actually... (VOICE CROSSOVER).

It will be enjoyable. Trust me.