“I wouldn’t put my staff in an inhumane area to work.” “Inhumane is a ridiculous word to use,” he said. He scoffs at the assertion that conditions in the jail are “inhumane.” He’d prefer to have more space in a permanent facility and more officers to supervise the inmates. However, he adamantly denies allegations that the conditions inside the temporary facility are less than adequate. Some drew comparisons to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s infamous “Tent City Jail,” which closed last year after housing inmates for more than two decades - a comparison that Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott strongly disputed.Īrnott said housing inmates in what he sometimes jokingly refers to as the “trailer park jail” isn’t an ideal setup. “I suggest to the sheriff that they find another way before they’re sued, because they’re going to be sued,” said Sharon Dolovich, director of the University of California, Los Angeles’ Prison Law & Policy Program.
One called it a “recipe for disaster.” Others cautioned that keeping people in those crowded conditions could be considered “inhumane” and amount to constitutional violations. Dozens of officials from other inmate-inundated counties across the country have been traveling to Springfield to see the first trailer jail for themselves, with the question: “Could this work for us?”Īt the same time, legal experts say the design of the trailer jail raises major red flags.
It has secured a multi-million dollar contract to build a trailer jail in Canyon County, Idaho. The company appears to have been busy in the past 12 months. The creator of the project, Seymour-based company All Detainment Solutions, is now capitalizing on a nationwide jail-overcrowding crisis. Springfield was apparently the first city to become home to a trailer jail, but it’s not the last. More: Greene County paid $100,000+ for inmate transport year after year but never had contract The opening of the jail expansion is still years away. County officials called it the first of its kind in the country, and a cost-effective temporary solution to a jail overcrowding problem that has plagued Greene County for more than a decade.Īccording to officials, the trailer jail could temporarily relieve some of the mounting pressures while Greene County works toward a more permanent fix of expanding the jail’s capacity - by renovating the existing building and constructing an addition across the street - with money from a new sales tax. The trailer jail began housing inmates about a year ago. Most are awaiting trial. Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott estimates that about 98 percent of people being held in jail have been charged with a crime and are waiting for an official declaration of guilt - or innocence. They are confined in a space that, per man, is less than half the size of a ping-pong table. Within the stainless steel walls, 108 men eat, sleep and live for days, weeks or months at a time. In a former parking lot next to the Greene County Jail in Springfield, Mo., six 52-foot semi-trailers sit surrounded by chain-link fence topped with swirls of razor wire.
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