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“I’m about to die in here”
A June 24 substation fire caused an all-day power outage that cut off the system that cools the Cuyahoga County jail in downtown Cleveland.
While county officials downplayed the impact of no air conditioning in the concrete high-rise jail, people inside told The Marshall Project - Cleveland they endured or witnessed dangerous conditions, medical emergencies and delays in getting released due to extensive staff call-offs. You can read the story here.
One correctional officer was hospitalized after falling ill due to the heat. An incarcerated man diagnosed with cancer told The Marshall Project - Cleveland he asked for help but passed out and struck a toilet before anyone came to his aid. Correctional officers then raised concerns to hasten his release.
“Look,” the man recalled saying to a jailer, “I didn't come here for this. I came here to clear up a warrant on a case that I had nothing to do with. And I'm sitting here now, and I'm about to die here because you all want to play like this is a game, like it's a joke, like my health ain't important.”
Nearly one in seven union correctional officers called off during the outage, according to Adam Chaloupka, general counsel for the Ohio Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.
Last week, the union’s request for additional compensation during the partial shutdown was initially met with uncharacteristic “push back” from the county, Chaloupka said. County officials have since determined the jail was working with a “skeletal crew” during the outage and approved the request for “comp time” for those who showed up to work.
Built in 1976, the jail has routinely been cited in state inspections for lacking windows. Officials say a nearly $1 billion new jail scheduled to open in Garfield Heights in late 2028 or early 2029 will have better ventilation and allow for outdoor access.
In the meantime, people in the old jail struggled to breathe in humid, hot cells despite efforts to keep them cool during the crisis.
“When you bring in box fans and there’s no ventilation, that doesn’t really help much,” said Karima McCree-Wilson, the Ohio operations manager for The Bail Project.
– Brittany Hailer and Doug Livingston
Ohio governor: Children sentenced as adults are too risky for youth detention
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed a proposal designed to keep children convicted of felony crimes in youth facilities instead of immediately sending them to adult prisons.
The measure was one of 67 vetoes DeWine issued July 1 in response to the legislature’s passage of the biennial state budget bill. The proposal would’ve affected dozens of young people sent to adult prison each year.
Depending on their age and the seriousness of their crimes, some children convicted of felony crimes under Ohio law, through a process called bindover, may either be rehabilitated by the Department of Youth Services (DYS) until they turn 21 or be sent directly to an adult prison. If put in prison, they must be housed out of sight and sound of adults.
“They're in a separate wing … isolated from adults, but they don't get the services that are guided toward juveniles that they would get if they were housed in DYS,” state Rep. Josh Williams, a Lucas County Republican, told The Marshall Project - Cleveland.
Williams proposed, and the Senate approved, a state budget amendment that would have automatically sent children under 18 to youth facilities. The proposal, however, would also have allowed the state director of youth services to transfer the children to adult prison if they posed a risk of harm to themselves or others. Transfers could have also taken place if the youth detention system, which costs nearly 6 times more per incarcerated person to operate, lacked space.
DeWine nixed the idea, saying he believed the measure would put less-violent youth at risk of harm. There are 26 people under 18 currently held in adult prisons in Ohio, according to a prison spokesperson.
“Individuals who are tried as adults are adjudicated so because they are a significant danger to society, according to the criminal justice system,” DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney told The Marshall Project - Cleveland.
The punitive nature of adult prisons, Tierney added, is “different than the purpose of DYS, which is to rehabilitate you, to eventually get them to reenter society and be productive adults. So there's a public safety issue that these DYS facilities are not equipped for that level of security.”
The cumulative effect of the bill could have been significant, especially for children prosecuted in Cuyahoga County.
A Marshall Project - Cleveland analysis of Ohio prison data found more than 550 people incarcerated in 2023 were admitted as children, including more than three dozen admitted that year. Cuyahoga County led Ohio with a quarter of all incarcerated children being held in adult prisons. The people incarcerated in 2023 who became adults in prison spent more than 430 years combined as incarcerated youth, including 173 people who spent a year or more in adult prison before turning 18.
– Doug Livingston
Around the 216
- The Cuyahoga County jail was the most-visited address for Cleveland EMS in 2024, continuing a trend that has seen calls for help at the troubled jail roughly double over the past six years. Signal Cleveland
- A formal dress code has been implemented for the first time for people appearing in the Akron Municipal Court. The policy bans clothing such as pajamas, slippers and bathrobes, among other apparel. Akron Beacon Journal
- After the FBI failed to take action, the Medina County Prosecutor’s Office is taking over an investigation of two off-duty police officers accused of improperly detaining a man they wrongly believed was an undocumented immigrant. Cleveland.com