Poor sanitation in jails has been the subject of civil rights lawsuits for decades. Plumbing issues, vermin infestations, feces-covered walls, and limited access to basic hygiene products, such as soap or tampons, are common complaints.
Courts almost universally agree that a lack of basic sanitation violates detainees' constitutional rights, said David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. Pre-trial detainees have sued, arguing that filthy conditions violate their due process rights. If a person has already been convicted, allegations of foul living conditions are considered cruel and unusual punishment.
Despite widespread legal challenges, many jails across the country are still filthy. Litigation against substandard conditions often ends in a settlement, Fathi noted, with officials agreeing to a change in policy, or better monitoring and enforcement, in exchange for not taking the case to trial. Settlements are typically the fastest route to clean things up, but they don’t set a legal precedent for other facilities, meaning there’s nothing requiring jails in the same county or state to adopt reforms.
Good hygiene in jail is often about more than detainees’ willingness to keep clean. Understaffing, overcrowding, facility maintenance, and mental health issues can all play a role. For example, the ACLU of Oregon, settled a lawsuit in 2019 against a county jail that had allegedly crowded a dozen women into a single intake cell, where they had to beg for toilet paper and menstrual products, and were denied showers.
“People don’t want to live in filth,” said Dr. Fred Rottnek, director of community medicine at St. Louis University and former medical lead at the St. Louis County Jail. “They are at the mercy of the administration to provide needed services because they can’t do it on their own.”
Reporters from The Marshall Project’s local news teams dug into the state of sanitation at jails in St. Louis, Cleveland and Hinds County, Mississippi, home to Jackson, the state capitol. They found that poor jail maintenance and management, as well as understaffing, mean many detainees are left to live in unsanitary conditions.
St. Louis City, Missouri
On most days, Marvin Young is desperate for a shower. For over a year, he’s been detained at the St. Louis City Justice Center awaiting trial on an attempted robbery charge.
“I haven’t had a shower in three to four weeks,” he said in June from the jail’s visiting room, pulling at the stains on his jail-issued T-shirt. Even through the glass, the odor was unmistakable.
Detainees are supposed to have shower access at least three times a week, according to jail policy, which was last updated in 2020. (The city did not respond to multiple requests for confirmation that staff still adhere to these policies). In the past, detainees have accused jail staff of withholding water access to punish people for speaking out about their conditions or asking questions. Jail policy says correctional officers can also force people to shower in certain circumstances. According to Young, however, people are desperate for the chance to rinse off.
“We gotta take bird baths in our cell,” he said, describing how he tries to cover the small opening in his cell door for privacy before attempting to clean himself over the sink. “I try to keep my spirits up, my health up… [but] I've been so mad, my knuckles are black from punching the walls.”
Current staffing levels mean there aren’t always enough officers to supervise people during recreation time — the hour that detainees get outside their cell for showers, phone calls, and stretching their legs — or to check and see if cells are clean. The jail, which houses roughly 800 detainees, is currently down about 50 correctional officers, according to jail commissioner Nate Hayward.
Hayward, who started at the jail in September after more than three decades at the county jail, said his goal is to hire 40 correctional officers by January, as well as two additional maintenance workers to address clogging in the showers and other facility needs.
The city’s former jail commissioner, Doug Burris, told The Marshall Project in April that roughly half of the pods in the jail were on a 23-hour lockdown. People formerly incarcerated at the jail described being held for days at a time in cells with feces on the walls. Their only reprieve was the hour they could spend in the dayroom — when there was enough staff to supervise it.
To make matters worse, detainees rarely have enough hygiene supplies, said Khanika Harper, a member of the city’s Detention Facilities Oversight Board.
The jail is supposed to give each detainee a personal hygiene kit with a toothbrush, soap, and deodorant when they first enter the jail. Once they run out, they have to purchase replacements through the commissary, or apply for free items through a caseworker if they can’t afford the commissary. Certain items, like underwear, can only be replaced for free after a caseworker has physically inspected the old ones, according to jail policy.
Harper said she’s heard multiple reports of people not receiving soap, deodorant, or cleaning supplies for their cell and common areas, leading to a buildup of dirt and bacteria on people and surfaces alike. The showers have cockroaches and feeble water pressure, she added. Men wash their clothes in the sink when they can’t get clean laundry. Women on their periods are supposed to receive free pads and tampons from caseworkers, but Harper said detainees told her those supplies don’t always make it to women in time.
“If they have mercy on you, they’ll get it to you when they get it to you,” she said.
Hayward, however, is optimistic that some of the strategies he implemented at the county jail could also work in the city. For example, on days when the county jail was too short-staffed for detainees to get out for rec hour, he instructed shift captains to let people out for the few minutes they needed to take a shower.
“If they don’t get out all day,” he said, “we gotta at least give them a shower.”
Cuyahoga County, Ohio
The Cuyahoga County Jail doesn’t have enough showers. The jail has been cited by the Ohio Bureau of Adult Detention year after year for not meeting the state’s standard of one shower for every dozen beds.
From June 2024 to June 2025, there were 334 work orders placed for malfunctioning or unusable showers, with complaints ranging from clogged drains and no water, to black mold in the shower with a leaking ceiling, according to records obtained by The Marshall Project.
Even if the jail cleared the backlog, it would still fall short of its requirement because some of its cells are holding two people, which exceeds the state’s ratio, Jennifer Ciaccia, press secretary for the Cuyahoga County Department of Communications, wrote in an email. Aging infrastructure exacerbates the strain on the jail’s plumbing system, Ciaccia added, leading to “frequent malfunctions.”
Detainees — some of whom can spend months awaiting trial — are responsible for cleaning the showers and other parts of the facility. But there is no set cleaning schedule, Ciaccia noted. Corrections officers are tasked with ensuring that the housing units are cleaned daily, and that showers are powerwashed “regularly.” Officers are required to provide residents with cleaning supplies, including solutions, mops, brooms, scrub pads, and toilet brushes.
Despite the mandate, detainees consistently complain of filthy conditions, including scratches and dirt on surfaces, disgusting sinks, and toilets caked in body fluids and grime. Staying clean is hard, they said, because the water pressure is so weak you can’t wash your hands. One detainee said he had to use the same spoon for every meal, cleaning it in the sink attached to his toilet.
In August, Tianetta Carter spent several days in jail after being arrested for a domestic violence charge. She refused to shower, she said, because the stalls were filthy. The toilets were so dirty, she asked for menstrual pads from a corrections officer so she could clean them first. Every time she went to the bathroom, she said she had to ask a corrections officer for toilet paper, and she was held in a cell where the toilet was backed up for hours.
“No matter how much they clean it, it’s still bad,” she said. “It’s so bad.”
Hinds County, Mississippi
When court-appointed monitors walked through Hinds County’s Raymond Detention Center in 2022, they found a myriad of deplorable conditions: broken toilets and showers, empty cells used as dumpsters, mice and people sleeping on floors in general areas, with no access to toilets. One thing particularly troubled a monitor about the cleanliness of a housing unit: Two men had been found covered in feces.
Three years later — even though the dumpster cells have been cleaned up and the most problematic housing unit is closed — monitors said the jail is getting worse.
“Overall, the Hinds County jail system has regressed over the past two-and-a-half years,” monitor David Parrish said in an August court hearing.
People detained there described vile conditions: smells of sewage, limited access to showers, toilets and laundry facilities.
The jail’s sanitation problem is just one symptom of larger operational failures, said Kathryn Bryan, who was the jail’s administrator in 2021. It is a reflection of the jail’s many other issues: overcrowding, understaffing, gang control and crumbling infrastructure. The jail has a well-documented history of negligence. In October, a court-appointed federal receiver took control to manage the jail’s budget and day-to-day operations.
Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment on the conditions, citing pending litigation and the incoming receivership.
“There’s nothing clean about that place,” said Tedrick Francois, who spent two weeks in jail this summer, after being arrested for allegedly attempting to deposit the same checks more than once. He was first held for hours in a dark holding cell with about 20 others. He remembers a broken toilet overflowing and spilling human waste onto the floor. His housing unit had one functioning shower, the monitoring report found.
Reports by court-appointed monitors say the jail is severely understaffed, with 71 corrections officers, about one-third of the number necessary to operate the facility. In the gaps, incarcerated people take control. “Pod bosses” control the distribution of food, hygiene products, and in some cases, who gets a cell, the monitors found.
“For the most part, there are no rules,” Francois said. “It’s the wild, wild west in there.”
To use the bathroom, D’Juanya Carter had to pay people in cells with toilets using snacks and bars of soap, his mother, Nicole Shelton, told The Marshall Project. Carter is currently incarcerated, awaiting trial for a murder charge. Shelton said she spent about $50 each week on commissary items. She said her son has irritable bowel syndrome, and as a result, often has to purchase more toilet paper in addition to the one roll he is supposed to be provided each week. His hygiene products are sometimes stolen or taken away by corrections officers in shakedowns, she said.
“I know that they’re in jail, but they are human beings, and they deserve at least basic care,” Shelton said. “I refuse to let my son be a casualty of war.”
Court documents show multiple examples of the system of exploitation that pervades the facility. In one case, two incarcerated people in the jail’s isolation unit were discovered underweight and covered in feces, as the “pod bosses” in control denied them food. In another case, a man was assaulted after urinating in the shower because he refused to pay to use someone’s toilet. Another defecated in the showers for the same reason.
Francois said the two weeks he spent in the jail and seeing how detainees were treated without dignity was not only dehumanizing, but desensitizing.
“You grow numb,” he said. “If you’re in there long enough, I can see how quickly you become an animal or a person who doesn’t care as much about people as you did when you went in there.”
