Inmates, sheriff say Charlotte’s jail has been overcrowded by ‘Iryna’s Law’
Overcrowding has worsened conditions at the Mecklenburg County jail in recent months, people held there told The Charlotte Observer.
“Tension is very high,” said Rayfield Taylor, who was booked in December. “People are upset, people are uncomfortable, people are complaining.”
Speaking to a reporter through a tablet last week, he and several others in Pod 6300 said they were sleeping on cots on the floor, getting little help when filing grievances and having to take cold showers.
Sheriff Garry McFadden called some of those claims exaggerations, but acknowledged that the jail is overfilled and said he is “very concerned.”
“When we have these issues, we want you to clearly understand that we are doing the best we can with the manpower that we have,” McFadden said in a Friday YouTube video that he posted shortly after the Observer sent his office questions.
The sheriff attributed overcrowding to “Iryna’s Law,” a criminal justice bill authored by Republicans in the state legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein in October. Among other changes, the bill has created stricter pretrial release rules.
Uptown’s jail is designed to hold 1,791 people, but the number has risen rapidly since “Iryna’s Law” went into effect Dec. 1.
On Dec. 27, there were 1,656 people in the jail, according to the sheriff’s office. Last week, more than 2,000 people were there.
Along with changes to pretrial release, there tends to be more crime — and more bookings — in warmer months, McFadden said. He added that jail staff have to keep some people, like gang members and co-defendants, separated. That can create logistical problems and contribute to overcrowded pods.
“Everyone deserves to be and to feel safe in their daily lives,” Stein spokesperson Bethany Wood said in an email. “Governor Stein signed House Bill 307 to bring the state closer to that goal by providing needed clarity for the judicial system that will help make sure people don’t fall through the cracks, but the bill represented only a starting point.”
Taylor said last week that he was one of 24 people in his pod sleeping on a “Stack-A-Bunk” despite being 56 years old, overweight and having arthritis in his knees.
That means his bed is just off the floor. He and others said they were in pain when they got up and down from the beds.
McFadden said the bunks are necessary to fit everyone who is booked and staying in the jail.
“We are making room for them to be inside the detention center,” he said. “You have to understand this: We cannot control what the townships and CMPD do when they are arresting people, and cannot tell them not to arrest people.”
The sheriff’s office confirmed that the jail has been on routine lockdown from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. since April 21. During lockdown, people in jail are restricted to their cells with little to no movement.
The lockdown time is necessary for staff to “have a break” and “do paperwork,” McFadden said in his YouTube video.
In general, grievances are taking longer to be answered, medical attention is delayed, meals are coming out later and everything is slowing down, people in the jail told the Observer.
“It’s a mess in here,” said Vincent Womack, who was booked in November.
The jail briefly had no hot water on May 6, but the issue was solved in about an hour-and-a-half, sheriff’s office spokesperson Bradley Smith said.
Other jails affected by law
“Iryna’s Law” is raising questions elsewhere in North Carolina.
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said last month that the law has perhaps had unintended consequences for already crowded jails. Her county’s jail is also using bunks, WRAL reported.
“I think this is more of a statewide issue that we need to maybe look at that law and figure out, are there things that should be tweaked in it?” she told WRAL.
In Iredell County, Sheriff Darren Campbell and a captain in his jail, Richard Adams, said numbers have not gone up significantly since the law went into effect.
“It’s increased a little bit,” Adams said, adding that any increase could be the result of other processes changing, like the state’s move to a digital court records system.
The law mandates a mental health evaluation for a suspect who is charged with a violent crime and has been involuntarily committed in the last three years, or if a judge or magistrate is concerned that the suspect might be dangerous. But it’s unclear who is responsible for that evaluation, Adams said.
That part of the bill will not go into effect until December.
“If it ends up falling back on the sheriff’s office to do that, we’re talking about personnel issues and then population increase — because we’ll be sitting with those people,” he said.