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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowMonroe County leaders deny that conditions at the county jail violate inmates’ constitutional rights, according to court filings in ongoing litigation on behalf of current inmates.
For years, leaders have faced litigation over the size of the jail’s inmate population, mold growth and other issues. A new lawsuit and a plumbing problem highlight the building’s continued challenges, and county officials have started to meet to consider solutions.
Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed a lawsuit seeking class-action status against several bodies of county government over the conditions, alleging the county has known about the jail’s issues for years but failed to do anything.
And later in July, the Charlotte Zietlow Justice Center, which houses the jail, was temporarily closed due to flooding. County officials have said inmates flushed a commissary bag of e-cigarettes and other items down a toilet in the facility.
The two instances shine new light on problems maintaining the 42-year-old building that also are not unusual at other jails in the United States, according to the ACLU.
“For whatever reason, it’s all too common in prisons and jail systems across the country that, once a facility is built, there’s just this kind of willful ignorance that you have to maintain these buildings, especially when you have hundreds or thousands of human beings passing through them and living in them,” said Corene Kendrick, deputy director for the ACLU National Prison Project, which seeks to enforce safe conditions at facilities nationwide through litigation, education and advocacy work.
As litigation provides context for how the jail could be improved, leaders in Monroe County also are considering solutions, whether through renovations or a completely new building somewhere else in the county.
Legal action
The July lawsuit is not the first targeting conditions at the Monroe County Jail. In 2008, a complaint was filed in federal court on behalf of current and future inmates alleging unconstitutional conditions at the jail.
The complaint, filed against the Monroe County sheriff and county commissioners, claimed conditions at the jail were “inhumane” and “unsanitary” with more than 40 people at a time sleeping on the floor due to overcrowding.
Cramped conditions led to dirty toilets and showers, cold meals and increased tension that eventually erupted into fights, according to court documents. Jail staff failed to supervise inmates properly because of the overcrowding, leading to dangerous conditions, court documents state.
In August 2009, the parties reached a private settlement agreement, which was approved by the court that December. The agreement stated that steps would be taken to address overcrowding issues at the jail and was set to expire in October 2011.
Following acknowledgment of the settlement agreement, the case was dismissed with prejudice to preclude any class member from reviving that specific case. It was dismissed without prejudice, however, if future classes wanted to pursue litigation.
The parties extended the termination of the agreement several times over the years as Monroe County officials indicated they were looking into the population problem and hoped to build a new facility. While county commissioners proposed building a new facility, the county council twice declined to fund it, according to court documents.
In June 2026, the case was officially dismissed after the settlement agreement was allowed to lapse in anticipation of new litigation, according to the ACLU of Indiana. A month later, the organization filed its lawsuit on behalf of current and future inmates at the jail.
The latest lawsuit emphasizes many of the same issues that have grown worse in the years since the first lawsuit was filed, the complaint states. Specifically, the lawsuit argues a severe overcrowding problem, with the jail operating at more than 90% of capacity earlier this summer, according to court documents.
Jails are overcrowded at 80% or more of their capacity, according to the lawsuit. At that point, “it’s impossible to perform effective classification of prisoners,” according to the complaint.
A representative of the Monroe County Legal Department declined to comment when contacted by The Indiana Lawyer.
The jail opened in 1984 for an original capacity of 128 inmates. It now has a maximum capacity of 287 inmates through double celling, or putting two inmates in a cell previously meant for one, court documents state.
On Aug. 24, the jail housed 234 inmates, the sheriff’s office told The Indiana Lawyer.
This overcrowding has led to other issues, according to the lawsuit. Two of the jail’s cell blocks contain more inmates than beds, forcing some to sleep on mattresses on the floor. Because of the cell size, some prisoners sleep directly next to toilet and sinks and risk getting stepped over and splashed when other inmates use them.
Tacked onto the overcrowding problem are structural issues that come with an aging jail, according to the complaint. Due to serious HVAC problems, some cell blocks get too hot in the summers and cold in the winters, putting inmate health at risk.
The jail’s plumbing fixtures are outdated, making it difficult for inmates to shower or sleep on dry mattresses, court documents state. Leaks lead to mold growth, which the sheriff’s office has been unable to stave off long term.
Overall, attorneys representing the inmates claim jail conditions deny the inmates their basic human needs, which is a direct violation of their Eighth Amendment rights as applied to convicted prisoners and 14th Amendment rights as applied to pre-trial detainees.
“If you’re pretrial [detention], you can’t be punished,” said Yvette Butler, a professor of law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law who is not involved in the jail litigation. “Some of the conditions might amount to punishment.”
The ACLU of Indiana is suing the Monroe County Council, county commissioners and the county sheriff in their official capacities.
The defendants responded to the plaintiffs’ complaint earlier this month, disputing in court filings much of the ACLU’s claims while still agreeing that the jail must be updated.
While the two sides disagree over the jail’s functional capacity, the sheriff admits that, with increasing frequency, it often exceeds capacity. The defendants disagree, however, that it’s impossible to perform effective inmate classification when the jail surpasses 80% capacity, according to court documents.
The defendants deny that the conditions at the jail violate any constitutional rights. While conditions are inadequate, they aren’t dangerous, they contend. The current conditions make it difficult, but not impossible, for the sheriff to make appropriate cell assignments, according to the defendants.
Delayed decisions
The problems don’t just hurt inmates, Kendrick said. She noted that, in her years working in prison advocacy, employees working in and around jails have sought her help to resolve problems.
“Oftentimes you have people quitting or not wanting to work in these facilities, and the facilities will start complaining, ‘We just can’t find enough staff,’” she said. “And it’s like, well, you have these abysmal work conditions for people, and nobody would want to work in that. And then you’ve caged all these other people who have to live in these conditions 24/7.”
A larger discussion surrounding the issue of overcrowding is pretrial suspension, according to both Kendrick and Butler. In pretrial suspension, those accused of a crime are held in jail for a set time while awaiting further proceedings from the court. Those in pretrial suspension haven’t been convicted of a crime.
Either the funding body, in this case Monroe County, needs to support improvements to the jail or public policy needs to shift surrounding the amount of people put in pretrial detention, Butler said.
“Something here has to change to alleviate all the pressures,” she said.
As defendants have admitted in court filings, Monroe County officials have been aware of issues in the jail for several years.
The latest attempt to resolve ongoing structural problems came in June, when the Monroe County Council established a subcommittee to look at possible solutions. The committee includes representatives from the board of commissioners, county council, mayor’s office and the prosecutor and public defender offices.
It has been meeting regularly to determine whether the county should renovate the existing jail or construct an entirely new one somewhere else.
Last month, the committee voted to recommend renovating the existing site in addition to expanding the jail’s square footage to a building next door.
That recommendation will be presented to a larger government board at a later date.•
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