Audit outlines serious safety issues at Milwaukee County Jail

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- An outside review of day-to-day operations at the Milwaukee County Jail found several major safety concerns, including a failure to properly monitor occupants on suicide watch and inconsistent communication with medical staff when corrections staff believe an inmate is at risk of harming themselves.

Milwaukee County Board supervisors questioned Sheriff Denita Ball and jail Supervisor Joshua Briggs during a meeting of the county board's audit committee Monday.

The committee heard a presentation of the report put together by the outside auditor, Creative Corrections. The audit listed five significant issues within the county jail:

• Procedures for suicide watch
• Addressing inmates' mental health problems
• Staffing shortages and training shortcomings
• Overcrowding
• A lack of oversight and accountability

The auditors spent most of October in Milwaukee to observe what was happening inside the jail. They found jail staff overused the suicide watch designation, with an average of 36 occupants receiving that designation each week.

The report found inmates placed on suicide watch often times were either not safely restrained or medical staff was not alerted to someone going on suicide watch.

Auditors noted instances where they observed jail occupants handcuffed to a bench for longer than eight hours. On one occasion, they saw an inmate try to commit suicide by choking themselves with an unused leg restraint while handcuffed to a bench. A jail officer noticed what the occupant was doing and called for help.

"It's hard to imagine being more vulnerable than being chained to a bench for more than eight hours," County Board Supervisor Jack Eckblad said. "It's our collective responsibility to fix this."

Supervisors also questioned why some jail staff were allowed to be working probationary shifts without first completing their six-week academy training.

The report noted staffing shortages put more pressure on those probationary corrections workers, who are often working 60-hour weeks. Overcrowding in the jail is draining staff, and auditors said court delays and strict restrictions on which inmates can be transferred into the lower-security Community Reintegration Center caused the cramped conditions.

Auditors also found jail supervisors were not keeping inventory of vital items like keys or dangerous items like unsecured kitchen knives being kept in cabinets.

"I mean, all of this is in the public report," Eckblad said. "Inventory of dangerous items in the kitchen; all of that is systematic."

Monday's hearing featured emotional testimony from Kerrie Hirte, whose daughter died by suicide in the jail in December 2022. Cilivea Thyrion's death was one of four that happened at the jail in a span of 11 months spanning parts of 2022 and 2023.

"You never listened. She was just another inmate to you," Hirte said, facing jail command staff attending the hearing. "Another dollar bill, and you still have the same issues."

Hirte said she believed improper supervision was also an issue in her daughter's death, claiming Thyrion had been on suicide watch for five days before her death. Hirte said an autopsy later revealed Thyrion had pieces of towel in her large intestine.

Both Ball and Briggs told supervisors on the committee they had already taken steps to improve how the jail addresses occupants' mental health problems.

"We do have those operational reviews with our mental health director and our health service administrator weekly," Briggs said.

Eckblad said the board will receive a second report from Creative Corrections in the next few months. In the meantime, he said supervisors were working to develop a system that would allow the board to verify whether jail officials had implemented the necessary changes.

"This is about basic humanity, and part of society should be a healing process," Eckblad said. "We should be able to be better than this."