ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. (WANE) -- Two years ago, federal judge Damon R. Leichty of the Northern District of Indiana didn’t hide his fury with the Allen County Commissioners and sheriff at a status hearing on the Allen County Jail. Three months earlier, he'd written a detailed opinion on a number of conditions he said he found, "disgusting and unconstitutional" at the 40-year-old facility after he sided with the Indiana ACLU and inmates in a federal lawsuit. The conditions were inhumane, Leichty concluded, because of overcrowding and understaffing at a jail in disrepair. He demanded that the population be reduced to 585, a near impossibility given the regulations that keep inmates separate and special units such as medical and solitary confinement. The Allen County Commissioners, the sheriff and the Allen County Council will meet on July 8 for a Zoom status conference, the second in less than a month. In a filing last week, Leichty said the unconstitutional conditions persist and called on the criminal justice system to address the population pressures daily and weekly. A bed of the Allen County Jail. (David Butler) The jail, originally built in 1981 and expanded later, had deteriorated to the point where former Allen County Sheriff David Gladieux moved to put its maintenance under the commissioners’ bailiwick. Structurally, hardly anything has changed at the jail as pipes continue to deteriorate and metal bed structures rust. ISP: Road rage leads to shots fired at semi on Indiana interstate Allen County Sheriff Troy Hershberger and his predecessor, Gladieux, managed to recruit more confinement officers, often with the prospect of promotions, which made it more palatable to work in the grim atmosphere of gray walls, soot at the windows and danger in the elevators and stairwells as a lone officer moves inmates in and out of the jail. Confinement officers are at 161 right now, a number way below the needed 201 officers that would have to be approved and funded by the county council, Leichty said. Meanwhile, three male inmates have died at the jail in the last nine months – two suicides and an overdose in February, facts that Leichty included in his latest filing. Plastic boats are used for sleeping when blocks become overcrowded Leichty also noted that the inmate population has increased by more than 100 from the same period last year and that more people are sleeping in “boats,” the plastic frames used when cells become overcrowded. That leads to more violence between inmates, Leichty noted. The current trend in jail design calls for PODS fanning out from a central monitoring desk allowing fewer officers to keep track of inmates’ movements. The POD design also puts water and utilities outside the cell so that inmates can't flood the floor by stopping up the sink. And, with a one-story design, inmates cannot pass drugs, contraband or send threats through “the bowl,” a common practice in older, multi-story jails like the existing one. After the lawsuit was filed in January 2020 and the commissioners awaited the federal decision, it appeared the best solution toward pushing down the inmate numbers and fixing the problems was to build a new jail, but they entertained the idea of renovation, a costly project that wouldn’t be enough given the county’s expanding population. Wednesday, Chris Cloud, Commissioners’ Chief of Staff, said the commissioners and later, the Allen County Council, had to "come to grips with reality that a new jail was needed," even if that wasn’t their first choice. Chris Cloud, Commissioners’ Chief of Staff The project estimated to cost about $300 million has weighed on the local officials, Cloud said, and it hasn’t been easy for them. The council, in charge of financing the jail, was divided for months until another jail hearing pushed the vote over the edge, 4-3, in February 2023. “You are undertaking the most expensive project that our county will ever take and you are undertaking a project that it would appear some in our community are adamantly opposed to it and will fight to the very end to stop,” Cloud said Wednesday in an interview with WANE 15. In the end, however, “the commissioners and everyone involved want to alleviate the unconstitutional conditions that are present at the Allen County Jail. That was the whole point of the lawsuit - a request to eliminate those conditions,” Cloud said. Because of a lawsuit with the Indiana Tax Attorney, construction is halted. When construction begins, the process will take three years, Cloud said. "All of us at the end of the day want to see a new jail built to alleviate those unconstitutional conditions," Cloud said. You can read the most recent filing on the jail conditions from Judge Leichty below. JudgeJailFilingDownload