U.S. Department of Justice investigators found a number of unconstitutional practices at the Escambia County Jail facility in northwest Florida that \u201cconstitute serious risks to prisoner safety,\u201d according to the Justice Department\u2019s findings letter. Among those problems were insufficient access to mental healthcare for the inmates, and racial segregation of black prisoners. Said the U.S. Department of Justice in a release:<\/p>\n
Specifically, the department concluded that known systemic deficiencies at the facility, stemming mainly from staffing shortages, continue to subject prisoners to excessive risk of assault by other prisoners and to inadequate mental health care. Additionally, the department found that until recently, the jail had an informal policy and practice of designating some of its housing units as only for African-American prisoners. By segregating some of its prisoners on the basis of race, the jail not only stigmatized and discriminated against many of its African-American prisoners, it also fanned combustible racial tensions within the jail.<\/p>\n
The racial segregation of black inmates into \u201cblack-only pods\u201d had been occurring for decades. Justice officials first discovered the practice in October last year during a tour. They warned Escambia County Jail officials then that this was a breach of 14th Amendment equal protection rights. According to the findings letter, \u201cFor decades, the Jail\u2019s officials have assumed that segregating on the basis of race would lead to a safer facility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roy Austin, Jr., who wrote the findings letter, said such assumptions were \u201cunproven and untethered to data\u201d and \u201cinsufficient to justify an explicit racial classification.\u201d<\/p>\n
Escambia County\u2019s population is 23.1 percent African-American, and 70 percent white. The county jail has 1,442 prisoners, 65 percent of whom are black and 35 percent white.<\/p>\n
A new sheriff for Escambia, David Morgan, told the Justice Department this past April that the segregation had stopped but Austin wrote that the Justice Department \u201cwill want to ensure that any agreement we reach with the Jail completely and permanently eliminates racially segregated housing units.\u201d Their investigation concluded that \u201cthe practice of segregating on the basis of race has compromised security by exacerbating racial tensions within the Facility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Escambia County is 23.1 percent African-American, and 70 percent white.<\/p>\n