St. Clair County Jail - Research Paper Example

St. Clair County Jail St. Clair County Jail located in Ashville, AL The first county jail in Ashville was established in 1827, by St. Clair resident, whose name is James Fulton (Jenks, 1997). The jail in Ashville has 74 beds that adult inmates as well as a juvenile detention facility. The County jail in Ashville does not house any women inmates, having them housed in the facility that was established in the Pell city. The Jail facility in Ashville employs 8 full time jailers, 6 part time jailers and 4 casual jailers.

The medical needs of inmates are addressed by a nurse contracted on a daily basis and a physician contracted on a weekly basis (Jenks, 1997). There are some notable events in the history of St. Clair county jail in Ashville. These events are as follows: a shoot out of Herbert Youngblood in July, 1934. This occurred when the officers from the jail received some information that there was a person who had a gun in the southern side of Port Huron. When they went to investigate, the officers, together with the then undersheriff found a man with a gun.

In an attempt to take it away from him, the man produced another gun and shot the undersheriff. A shoot out then occurred between the officers and the subject. This resulted to the injury of the subject himself (Youngblood), and other five subjects (Lee, 2005). In 1973, two suspects attempted to leave the jail but through the windows of the post office but were confronted by heavily armed deputies. The suspects and the deputies engaged in a shoot out that eventually left the two suspects dead (Jenks, 1997).

In December 1971, while the construction of the Huron treatment plant tunnel was underway, an explosion occurred. 22 men died and many others were injured during the explosion. Another notable event is that of April 7, 1982. A sixteen years county resident, James Porter had engaged in the murder of five family members of the Guiliani family in their Yale home. Porter was the tried in court and sentenced to serve five murder sentences. Come January 1985, two men engaged in a bank robbery at Fort Gratiot bank.

They managed to escape, exchanging vehicles but were eventually spotted and stopped at traffic by Deputy Gleason (Lee, 2005). The robbers instead shot at the deputy’s vehicle and injured him on the forehead. This notwithstanding, he deputy pursued them and eventually managed to put them in custody, before going to hospital where the bullet was removed from his forehead. Deputy Gleason emerged as one of the most respected deputies to ever serve in this county. Finally, there was a notable event in April, 2008.

A police chief and his deputy were investigating a case of reckless driving, when the suspect shot at both of them injuring them badly. The police chief was rushed to hospital but the deputy remained in the scene of crime to give the much required information to the officers, which eventually lead to the capture of the suspect. This saw the deputy, O’Boyle, awarded the officer of the year 2009 (Lee, 2005). There are many challenges facing this department. Most significant challenges are murder, drug trafficking and traffic enforcements (Newman, 2008).

These challenges have seen the establishment of relevant divisions to handle these challenges. The investigation division has nine investigators that handle cases of property crimes like burglary, robbery and forgery crimes. The investigators are also responsible for investigating murder, homicides and sexual assault crimes. The road patrol division handles traffic and other related road calls of service. It comprises of 31 deputy sheriffs. They provide physical security to judicial proceedings and serves with court warrants as well as transportation of inmates and handling the inmate’s disturbances.

The Drug task force (CANINE) handles cases of drugs, fighting against drug trafficking in this county. They provide searches in schools as well as demonstrations to students and citizens. The rates of crimes in the past year have been note to be o the rise in spite of all these efforts applied towards controlling crime. This is so because drug trafficking from other states and counties have significantly increased, due to the shortage of staff to handle and control this crime (Newman, 2008). The establishment of the above mentioned divisions has gone along way in helping address the problems crime prevention issues.

The hierarchy of leadership has the chief at the top closely followed by Sherriff, the undersheriff, and then the deputies. Training of deputies is done on a cross functional basis (George, 2005). This ensures that the deputies are trained in a set of skills so as to be able to assist in any given area where the need arises. Although there are specialized divisions charged with the responsibility of handling particular issues, such as the Road patrol division handling the traffic and other road related crimes and the drug task force handling the issues of drug trafficking, the deputies are trained and armed with all these skills to ensure they can offer any support service where need be.

On top of their line of specialization (George, 2005), the deputies are trained in other specialized areas such as computer and internet detective, Arson investigation and explosives handling and special responses such as accident investigation and special medical examination. Works Cited George, N. (2005). Local History of saint Claire County. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library. Jenks, D. (1997). History of St. Clair County and its people. Michigan: Albert & sons. Lee, W. (2005). Origin of the name St.

Claire County. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library. Newman, H. (2008). St. Claire County Jail. Journal of Crime and Justice. Springer.