A county inmate was charged with raping a weekend inmate.
lachua County jail officials say overcrowding is largely to blame for the alleged rape of a 19-year-old University of Florida student serving a weekend sentence stemming from a marijuana charge.
But officials acknowledge they're reviewing the procedures that placed a nonviolent drug offender in the same 7-foot-by-8-foot cell as a man awaiting trial for sexual battery.
"It's truly a shame that this had to happen to someone who had no expectation other than spending 72 hours in the county jail," said Maj. Robert Chapman, director of the jail.
On Monday, jail inmate Randolph Jackson, 35, was charged with the rape of a fellow inmate.
Jackson has been in the jail awaiting trial since July, when he was arrested for the alleged sexual battery of a southeast Gainesville woman. According to police reports, a man broke into the woman's house while she was sleeping, held a pair of scissors to her throat and raped her.
Since his arrest, Jackson has lived in the jail's B Pod, a wing dedicated to inmates held on felony charges. Most of B Pod's inmates are charged with violent crimes, but the pod is also used as a holding tank for felony inmates who haven't yet been assigned a place on one of the jail's other wings.
B Pod's inmates spend most of their time in one- or two-man cells. Inmates held on nonviolent crimes are usually placed in barracks-style accommodations elsewhere in the jail.
Jackson got a temporary cell mate Friday afternoon, when a South Florida drug court referred a 19-year-old UF student to the Alachua County jail for a weekend sentence. The student had been released on his own recognizance after being arrested on a felony charge of delivery of marijuana.
When he violated the terms of his release, the court ordered him to spend four weekends in jail.
The student reported for his first weekend of jail on Friday afternoon. But by the time he arrived, the jail already had 918 inmates - two short of the jail's total capacity. Jail officials say they knew he belonged in one of the open-barracks wings, but since those wings were already full, he went into a kind of administrative limbo - and into B Pod.
Jail officials say that during periods of overcrowding, it's common for nonviolent offenders to spend a little time in B Pod, where they are typically matched up with cell mates who don't appear to be a threat to other inmates. Jackson apparently met that description: except for a fight early in his jail time, officials say, he hadn't given jail officials any trouble.
"He seemed like a good inmate, and there was no reason to think anything bad would happen," said Lt. Jim Troiano, spokesman for the Sheriff's Office.
But something apparently did happen early Saturday morning. According to an arrest report, Jackson allegedly held a ballpoint pen to his cell mate's throat and raped him shortly after midnight, when inmates were supposed to be sleeping.
Jail officials say they knew nothing of the incident until Saturday, when the 19-year-old's family members reported it. Troiano said family members became concerned after the 19-year-old made "subtle" comments about the alleged incident during a Saturday morning phone call. Family members became alarmed, Troiano said, after Jackson took the phone and said "something that led them to conclude there was a problem."
Jackson was moved to a single-person cell after the incident was reported. His cell mate was taken to Shands at AGH for examination, and he acknowledged that Jackson had raped him. According to a police report, hospital officials said the 19-year-old's wounds were "consistent with (his) story."
Jackson's lawyer, a public defender, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Jackson's alleged victim - who was released from jail Sunday - did not answer calls to his Gainesville home.
Chapman says no one at the jail violated standard procedure in placing the 19-year-old in B Pod. He said jail officials are in the process of reviewing their rules for admitting inmates. But they'll have few options, he said, if the jail's population remains near capacity.
Jail officials say that ideally, the jail should never house more than 782 inmates - or 85 percent of the jail's capacity. With a 15 percent vacancy, jail officials say, they'll rarely have trouble finding safe accommodations for new inmates.
When the last addition to the jail was completed in 1994, the jail's population hovered around 450. Statistics for the first four months of 2003 show average daily populations between 800 and 900 inmates.
County officials have long been aware that the jail is growing more crowded. A plan to build a new pod for the jail has been on the county's wish list of projects since the late 1990s - but with county government facing deficits already this year, funding for that wing could take years to materialize.
County Manager Randy Reid said he and other officials are working on alternative options - including early release and alternative-sentencing programs - that could reduce the jail population.
But one anti-prison-rape activist says corrections officials tend to focus too much on overcrowding as the cause of rape in prison.
"The statement that overcrowding is the cause of the problem has become a kind of cop-out," said Alex Coolman, spokesman for Stop Prisoner Rape, a Los Angeles-based advocacy group.
"You should never house a nonviolent criminal with a violent criminal," Coolman said. "That should send up a red flag that something's not being done right here."
This will be happening to people in prision for a crime that harms NOBODY. We need to face facts that marijuana being illegal is as much of a farse as prohibition in the 1920's. An outdated, hypocritical law that MUST END to prevent crimes happening in prision to people who did nothing wrong...... you are being lied to.