PANAMA CITY— The Bay County Jail has been called a city unto itself.
On any given day, the facility at 5700 Star Lane is home to a general population of 900 to 1,000 inmates. Funded by county taxpayers, the 213,000-square-foot jail has a cafeteria that serves 2,700 daily meals a day, medical facilities that look like an emergency room, a laundry facility, and drug and vocational counseling training areas.
Sheriff Frank McKeithen is seeking nine more corrections officers for the jail. The salaries would cost a combined $439,077 in the first year.
“We are actually paying people more for overtime than we would if we had the correct number of people,” McKeithen recently told Bay County commissioners.
Before giving a more than two-hour tour of the jail recently, Assistant Warden Frank Owens said the extra corrections officers are crucial in this environment.
“We need a relief factor. That is the key,” he said. “You have to have enough people to take care of situations that are unscheduled. We have a fire. We have a fight. We have a medical emergency — those kinds of things where you have to have a response team of three or four people to go into a dorm and shut down a fight.”
When staff is out, such as last year when the flu bug was going around, the jail must scramble to find people from any department they can, he said.
“We keep shutting down those support services until we get our necessary posts filled,” Owens said.
Correctional officers were constantly on the run on this day, walking rounds past inmates that are deemed a suicide risk, escorting higher-risk inmates in shackles and escorting inmates to a video conference room to make a first appearance before a judge.
In the medium-custody section recently, inmates were sitting on their bunks staring forward. They were banned from using televisions, phones and other privileges after one inmate the night before smashed another one’s head in with a locker box. Nobody would talk about the incident, so everyone was punished.
Lt. Steven Smith said officers have to break up one or two fights a week.
“Sometimes they are minor,” he said. “Sometimes they are major. It also depends on gang activity. … It’s a subculture inside of a culture. If you study sociology, corrections, jails, prisons — this is its own subculture.”
Cpl. William Stoudt, who works in the section of the jail where high-security inmates are housed, said corrections officers must watch out for suicides in that area of the jail. Recently, an inmate nearly hanged himself with a sheet, but officers and medical personnel were able to get medical attention just in time to save the man’s life.
“The first 24 hours are the biggest chance for suicide down here,” Stoudt said. “We go in every half-hour and do a cell check. We watch the floors. We have two officers do 30-minute checks.”
He said officers in that section of the jail have to constantly watch their back.
“You get different scenarios every day, depending upon what the inmates needs are,” he said. “You have to watch everything. A broom is a weapon. A mop bucket is a weapon. A dinner tray is a weapon. You have to control those all day. I’ve seen the plastic chairs used as weapons, as well. You constantly have your head on a swivel and watch your back.”
He said extra corrections officers would take stress off current ones.
“It would give me the extra officer I need down here to keep those of us working secure and keep the inmate secure as well,” he said. “That’s our primary concern — is their welfare.”
