SC asks Spartanburg to build a bigger jail. But will it fix overcrowding? (2024)

SPARTANBURG — The S.C. Department of Corrections has asked Spartanburg County to add more bedsto its chronically overcrowded jail.

In a Feb. 3 letter to the county, SCDC Compliance Director Blake Taylor thanked the county for its planned 260-bed addition to the main jail, meant to replace an annex facility, and asked the county to “launch an initiative for developing your strategy and a timetable on further expansion to accommodate the overcrowding.”

The county has until May 2 to respond to the request.

The annex is a warehouse that was converted to hold inmates more than 30 years ago. It was initially meant to be a temporary solution when it was renovated in 1990. But due to overcrowding in the main jail, it has continued to hold inmates.

The 260-bed replacement won’t fix the jail’s capacity problem. The main jail on California Avenue is rated for 329 inmates, but a 2022 inspection found it was holding an average of 741 inmates a day, with more than a dozen violations of state minimum standards.

The annex near the courthouse on North Daniel Morgan Avenue is rated for 131 inmates but holds more than 170 on average. It also violated state regulations, according to the inspection. Many of the problems were caused by overcrowding and staffing vacancies.

The Corrections Department sent those inspection reports to Spartanburg County Council so council members would “comprehend the magnitude of deficiencies which are directly or indirectly related to overcrowding and staffing shortages,” Taylor wrote.

Such problems include not enough toilets and showers, cells holding double their rated capacity and inadequate laundry facilities. The jail also didn’t have enough staff to provide 24/7 coverage of all posts. Its intercom system, which inmates used communicate with guards, didn’t meet state standards. In some cells it wasn’t working.

Jails are supposed to follow those standards to prevent them from deteriorating and ensure “political responsibility,” said University of South Carolina law professor Madalyn Wasilczuk. But SCDC can’t enforce the state standards except by threatening to close the jail. The last time that occurred was decades ago when the Corrections Department closed the Union County jail after a failed bond referendum, said spokeswoman Chrysti Shain. The county inmates were held in the Union City jail until a new county jail was built.

“That's a very blunt instrument for achieving anything,” Wasilczuk said, “and of course, those people would have to go somewhere.”

When the main jail opened in 1994, Spartanburg County had a population of 238,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That year, BMW opened its Spartanburg plant, sparking three decades of new capital investment primarily centered on manufacturing. Using fee-in-lieu-of-tax agreements, the council has steered billions of dollars and tens of thousands of new jobs into the county. The population had grown to almost 346,000 by 2022, according to the Census Bureau.

But the jail capacity has remained the same.

“The day we opened the jail, it was overcrowded,” said County Councilman David Britt, who was elected in 1991. “The old theory is ‘if you build it, they will come,’ and that’s what happened immediately. We’ve done everything in our power to reduce the population, but if you break the law and get arrested, you have to go somewhere.”

County administration and council Chairman Manning Lynch did not respond to texts, emails and phone messages seeking comment on the letter from SCDC.

Experts say overcrowded and understaffed jails can create dangerous situations for the inmates and the correctional officers. But limited data makes it hard say whether that played a role in the six deaths deaths in the Spartanburg County Detention Center in 2022. The jail had the most deaths in the state, matched only by Greenville and Charleston, which have much larger jails. As of March 30, three people have died in the Spartanburg jail in 2023.

Spartanburg's jail system has a rated capacity of 460 between the main jail and annex. But other counties with similar populations have detention centers that hold more inmates. Lexington County, which has about 39,000 fewer residents than Spartanburg, has a county jail rated for 599. Greenville County's population is 58 percent larger than Spartanburg with about 548,000 people, but its jail is almost three times larger with a capacity of 1,277.

Horry County has about 37,000 more people than Spartanburg County and its jail holds more than 1,000. During its last inspection, it had an average daily population of 722. The jail dates back to 1989 but was expanded as the county grew.

“They also have a much better source of revenue,” Britt said, referring to Horry County’s tourist mecca, Myrtle Beach. “Their revenue stream is a lot stronger than ours.”

Other solutions

Britt said county attorneys and administrators are preparing a response for SCDC, but he’s not in favor of building a bigger jail.

He’s not alone. Everyone seems to offer a different reason for the crowding problem, and a different solution, too.

Even if building bigger detention centers was a popular solution for overcrowding— and it’s not— South Carolina Association of Counties Deputy Director Josh Rhodes told The Post and Courier most counties probably can’t afford to build bigger jails anyway.

Britt said Spartanburg County has other priorities like roads and infrastructure it needs to address instead. His preferred solution is to keep mentally ill people out of jail and shorten stays before trial.

“If you break the law and the law is ‘you go to jail for this offense,’ I don’t want to stop that,” Britt said. “But ... we’ve got to find a way to get more court sessions going on with more judges.”

Spartanburg County Public Defender Michael Morin said high bond was just one of several reasons for overcrowding at the jail, pointing to the number of mentally ill people who are locked up and the frequent use of home detention as a condition of bond. He said his office’s heaviest pre-trial workload was handling motions to get defendants on or off home detention.

Those who agree to home detention as a condition of bond will later file a motion to get that part revised because the bills are stacking up, Morin said. It can cost the accused hundreds of dollars a month. Those in jail try to get on home detention because it’s better than being locked up. Those who violate home detention end up back in jail.

Morin said most people who get home detention should be getting bond without the added stipulation. But it is difficult for him to convince a defendant that home detention is a raw deal.

“All they see is they can get out,” Morin said.

County Councilman Monier Abusaft, a criminal defense attorney who serves with Britt on County Council’s public safety and judiciary committee, said he wished judges would approve bond for non-violent drug offenders. He’s seen defendants who were in jail a year before they got a bond.

The state General Assembly is debating a handful of bills that would make it harder for defendants to bond out of jail. Abusaft said those debates have caught the attention of judges, who are elected by legislators.

“The circuit court judges don’t have to deal with the problems that result from them keeping too many people in with no bond,” explained Abusaft. “The judges are responding to all of this talk among the legislature about 'no bond, we need to give out less bond.’”

Wasilczuk said the answer is to keep people out of jail before trial whenever possible.

“The use of jail pre-trial just really needs to be rethought,” said Wasilczuk. “Because what happens when you build a bigger jail is you fill it, and then you need to build a bigger jail.”