The Evolution of Direct Supervision - From One Jail Administrator's Perspective

On March 15, 1974, I began working for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Tampa, Florida. Over the next few years, I served as the Planning, Research, and Training Officer, the Major in charge of the Administrative Division, and then the Major in charge of the Services Division. On August 1, 1981, Sheriff Walter C. Heinrich appointed me as the administrator of the county jail system because I was the only division commander with an advanced degree (criminology and corrections), and I had overseen the construction of the Morgan Street Jail Annex and the sheriff’s new headquarters.

The jail system I took over was comprised of four jails previously run by the Police Department, the Board of County Commissioners, the City Sanitation Department, and the Sheriff. The oldest facility was built in 1926, and the newest was completed in 1981. The system had an average daily population (ADP) of approximately 1,200 inmates—all housed in facilities that were definitely first and second-generation jails.

Almost immediately, I took advantage of the Large Jail Network, which was held in Boulder, Colorado, at the time. There, they told me of a new way to operate jails—Direct Supervision—the third generation of jails. It started with the Federal Bureau of Prisons in three facilities or Metropolitan Correctional Centers (MCCs) and then spread to the first county jail, Contra Costa in Martinez, California, which opened in 1981. I thought that they must have lost their marbles. The “real inmates” in my jail system would certainly tear such a place apart.

But at least I kept an open mind; so, I took a trip, along with three skeptical officers. We toured the MCC in Chicago, Illinois, the MCC in Tucson, Arizona, and the County Jail in Contra Costa, California. We came back motivated that there was a better way to run a jail and, most importantly, it would create a better working environment for our deputies.

That was followed by a similar trip by Sheriff Heinrich, because we figured that if he bought into the process, we were good to go. When he returned from the tour, he said: “We need to run the whole jail, not just the hallways and control rooms, and we need to take care of our staff.”

We took that as a “go-ahead” for our plans to build the Orient Road Jail (ORJ). When it opened in l990, it was the largest direct supervision jail in the country, with l,711 beds. Each housing pod was a little jail unto itself with 64 beds, its own recreation yard, and washers and dryers to take care of personal items. The Standards Committee of the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections accepted my recommendation for 64 to a pod instead of the earlier standard of 48. That number made future construction much more reasonable. At the time the norm was to build 32 over 32, with the inmates held in ground-level cells and a mezzanine level.

When our plans for the ORJ became public, the outcry was to “…make it a nasty place so the inmates won’t want to come back.” What that ignored was the fact that the average length of stay for the typical inmate was 24 days, while the officers were there for 10, 20, or 30 years. We needed to make it a good, safe place to work.

There were originally eight principles of direct supervision. We tried to make the ninth one “Commitment”. Even though I was president of AJA at the time, the final vote was for “Ownership”. I still stand by Commitment, from the very top (sheriff) to the rawest recruit, because without it, direct supervision will fail. As a consultant, I have seen that happen more than once.

Direct supervision works as long as 10% of the capacity is single cell confinement. I learned that from Larry Ard, the Director of Contra Costa. His guidance has proven right over the years. It is the hammer that makes direct supervision work. It starts in booking. We don’t care what you are charged with as long as you behave; have a seat, take a number, we will process you. If you act out, we have a place for you—a single cell. That carries on into housing, where behavior is more important than charge.

Over time, I saw changes in the direct supervision design. At one American Institute of Architects display, a control room was added, so that the “flexible design” would work if the operational philosophy of the facility changed. To my mind, that was an invitation to fail. As a cost-saving measure in construction (but an operational nightmare forever), pods shared a common recreation yard. An officer’s station was raised, or a red or yellow line was painted on the floor around it (don’t come any closer than this!). Sometimes, instead of saying anyone can be in direct supervision, there were levels of inmates. In such cases, one tier would be locked down, and the other would be let out of their cells. Or the officer would be pulled out of the pod at night when the inmates were asleep. All these measures were indicators of a lack of “Commitment” to direct supervision.

After the ORJ was built, there was still a need to add more capacity. A long search entailed which resulted in the Falkenburg Road Jail (FRJ) site being selected on 140 acres three miles east of the ORJ. In planning for the FRJ, several factors came into play. The budget would not permit the construction of all single cells. But a good place to work had to be maintained.

We questioned staff who said:

· “I like Direct Supervision and the control it allows.”

· “I don’t like the mezzanine level. I can’t see what is going on upstairs.”

· “I don’t like all those cells. They have to be inspected.”

When it came time to decide, a single level instead of a mezzanine was adopted. But I had no empirical data upon which to decide how many 2-, 4-, 8-, or 16-person cells should be built. So, we decided if we were going to save some money through multiple cell configurations, why not save a lot of money? The result was a 64-bed dormitory, open at the center, and with single-level beds around the perimeter. Each pod has a single cell or time-out room, which is used for strip searches and to provide the officer with a means of incremental control before it is necessary to send an uncooperative inmate to confinement housing.

When practitioners from other jurisdictions first heard of the FRJ and its dormitories, they said: “You can put trusties there or minimum custody inmates, but not real prisoners.” Well, they were wrong. We have been doing it for over 20 years. In fact, because of the falling population, the ORJ has been shut down except for booking and releasing. All of the inmates are now held at the FRJ, which has a rated capacity of 3,400.

The number of bookings peaked at almost 75,000 in 2006, and the ADP at more than 4,600 in 2005. Last year, the ADP was about 3,348, while the number booked was only 40,314. As a result, it has been possible to shut the housing down at ORJ.

The inmates at the Hillsborough County Jail System are no better or worse than those found in other jail systems. The difference is the way they are treated (from the moment they enter booking until they are finally released). Dormitories are well equipped to handle all levels of inmates, from those charged with misdemeanors to first-degree murder, assuming that the NIC Objective Jail Classification System is in place. The precast concrete walls keep them there, and the officer in the pod keeps things orderly.

The cost of building dormitories is about half the cost of single cell confinement space. If we had it to do all over again, the ORJ would have been built using the dormitory model. At the time (1990), we built to state-of-the-art levels. We have learned since then. The direct supervision model has evolved. Hopefully, the word will spread.

David M. Parrish served with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office (Tampa, FL) for 34 years (1974-2008). He was the Colonel in charge of the Jail System for 27 years. A past President of AJA (l991-92), he was also a founding member of the CJM Commission and is a Life Member of AJA. He can be reached at DMP203@verizon.net