JEFFERSONVILLE — Clark County Sheriff Jamey Noel knows that when someone is booked into his jail, that person is likely at one of the lowest points of an addiction or mental illness.
Housing them inside a pod isn't enough, Noel said. The majority of people in the Clark County jail need some sort of treatment to keep them from coming back. But how can an underfunded, understaffed jail possibly live up to the task? That's what Noel wanted to explore when he agreed to let TV cameras and undercover participants in the jail last fall.
The second season of the A&E TV show 60 Days In" came to a close Thursday night following a special reunion episode. The show followed a total of 15 people from across the country who went undercover as inmates inside the jail for up to two months. Noel said he took notes from each episode, and on Friday mornings he would relay those notes to his staff. Those usually weren't good mornings to be in the sheriff's office, Noel said.
In season two, viewers watched inmates hand down beatings as punishment for crossing the wrong person. A sewage backup had staff scrambling and revealed cracks in the jail's emergency response plan. Inmates got away with makeshift drugs and illegal contraband. Corrections officers missed illegal activity and made mistakes on national TV.
"I said all along that I had to take the good with the bad," Noel said at a Thursday news conference. "Do I have regrets? Sure, but overall I think it was a good learning experience for us."
Only 10 days passed between filming for season one and season two, which is why viewers may not see the changes Noel said the jail has made since then. Here are some of those changes Noel announced this week:
• The jail bought two body scanners to keep contraband, weapons and drugs from coming into the jail. The scanners were purchased from a federal surplus for $36,660, money that came from fundraisers.
• The jail now has a K-9 drug detection dog for searches throughout the facility.
• Seven corrections officers resigned and five were terminated. A corrections officer who pulled out a riot gun and threatened inmates during the sewage backup was disciplined, Noel said.
• The Clark County Council approved funding for four new medical staffers for 2017. Noel said the additional staff will allow corrections officers to focus more on supervising inmates.
• The A&E TV crews left behind a security camera system vastly better than what the jail had before.
• "Numerous" inmates were criminally charged as a result of behavior seen on the show, including battery and criminal mischief.
One change that may not seem so big but that Noel said can make a difference, is a pamphlet that every inmate receives once they're released. The pamphlet lists tools for dealing with anxiety and depression. It also provides national and local resources for addiction and mental health.
Noel said the idea for the pamphlet came from debriefing sessions with each of the undercover participants. He also got insight from Indiana University Southeast Criminologist Jennifer Ortiz. What they found was that even for the people who stayed voluntarily in the jail for just 60 days or less, the effects of incarceration made it difficult to transition back to the outside world.
"I think when you take someone and you place them in a jail like the Clark County jail where they are not allowed outside, they don't see daylight, they don't see cars moving, they literally don't have any of the experiences that they would have outside — it’s like dropping you inside of a box for 60 days — and I can just imagine that even a month of that would probably have some impact on people," Ortiz said.
Ortiz was particularly interested in how incarceration affected undercover participant Ashleigh, whose husband, Zac, went undercover for season one. The couple has a young child. Viewers watched as Ashleigh's incarceration put a strain on her family and relationship. Phone conversations between the couple often ended in fights.
Ortiz noted that many of the women inside the Clark County jail are mothers. And women, she said, are the fastest-growing demographic in prisons. One thing that could make a difference for families is face-to-face visitation, Ortiz said. The Clark County jail only allows telephone calls and video visitation. Ortiz said studies show that face-to-face visits can reduce stress and recidivism.
Ashleigh had the added stress of being in recovery for addiction. A group of women in Ashleigh's pod often stayed up late smoking whatever they could. Ashleigh was sober for four years by the time she went undercover, but she admitted that the jail environment tempted her to use again. Noel said about 80 percent of the jail's population is incarcerated for drug-related offenses.
"We're dealing with the direct results of people at their lowest point. They're addicted to drugs, or more particularly, if they're homeless or indigent, they've got mental issues that the facilities can't handle," Noel said. "We get those here at the Clark County jail, that's where they end up at, and that's tough for us."
The jail now uses LifeSpring Health Systems as its addiction and mental healthcare provider. LifeSpring offers continuous care after release for people who can't otherwise afford treatment. Noel said he has already started talking to state legislators about how to better address the community's drug and mental health needs.
"People who have substance issues, they need health care, they need sobriety. And once they find sobriety they can move away from a life of crime," Ortiz said. "So we shouldn't be incarcerating people who have drug problems. We should be finding a way to actually get them treatment."
Rethinking who we incarcerate and how we treat them is key to fixing a "broken" criminal justice system, Ortiz said. County jails are just one piece of that system, and one that Ortiz said is often overlooked when studying corrections. But the majority of the people inside those jails, Ortiz added, will return to the communities where they were arrested.
"I hope that the public realizes that these are very real people and that 97 percent of them will be released from correctional facilities," she said. "So they're all coming back and they will be our neighbors, and we should want them to be better off than when they entered [jail]."
Noel said the show was the "experience of a lifetime" and has shared what he learned with sheriffs from across the country.
"So it was really more than just a simple experiment of how can we fix the facility, but also then how can we start looking at the effects of incarceration," he said. "And hopefully that people will not want to come back to jail."