Cache Valley jail takes on new safety features
Deputies at the Cache County Jail recently learned of inmates planning to take advantage of mechanical failures on cell doors and were able to curtail the inmates’ plans, said Logan City Police Lt. Von B. Williamson.
The jail’s locking system has beset the jail with problems since remodeling in 1983 – this resulting from a lawsuit, Williamson said.
The retrofitted system has various safety features. Only one door may be open at a time in a cell block. If the cell block door is open, the individual cell doors cannot be opened without a key. If one of the cell doors is open, the cell block door cannot be opened without a key. Another safety precaution in the jail is that deputies carry neither keys or weapons of any kind. Williamson said it is relatively easy for a few inmates to overpower a deputy. Therefore, the deputies cease being targets by not carrying items that would be useful to inmates.
“Remember, these are violent felons with major discipline problems,” Williamson said.
Despite these features, the system continues to fail. Because of the failures, the deputies have started carrying keys, Williamson said.
“The inmates have nothing to do but think of how to get out,” Williamson said. “They are in their cells 23 hours a day.”
Cache County’s maximum security jail holds 77 inmates for long-term housing, but since Aug. 29 the jail has not had fewer than 100 inmates, Williamson said. As a result, the jail sends inmates to other jails in northern Utah, he said.
Williamson said it costs the jail $2,150 per day to house 50 inmates in another jail, without including the cost of wear and tear on vehicles and overtime pay for deputies.
There have only been three jailbreaks in the last 21 years, he said.
The first occurred Oct. 21, 1980, on Williamson’s second day on the job. Before the jail was remodeled, an inmate was able to grab a knife and threaten a deputy with it and escape. He was later caught.
The second jailbreak happened in 1997, and Williamson said nobody knows what transpired because the inmate was later found murdered in Wyoming.
The most recent escape occurred in June 2000. An inmate was working in the laundry room and was able to escape through a ceiling. Because construction workers hadn’t reinforced the laundry room walls above the ceiling, the man simply crawled through the ceiling tiles, dropped down into a deputy’s empty office and walked out the front door. He was later caught at his mother’s home in California. Since that time, Williamson said, the walls in the laundry room have been reinforced and the ceiling is now solid.