From the outside, the Dukes County House of Correction (DCHOC), the stately 19th-century white clapboard building at 149 Main Street in Edgartown, looks like a relatively pleasant place to do time.
But a recent inspection by the Department of Public Health finds that “pleasant” may not accurately describe the aging facility. A six-page Dec. 15, 2016, report, detailing a Dec. 9 inspection, describes a long list of infractions — 36 of them are repeaters. The severity of the infractions runs the gamut, from moldy bathroom grout and peeling radiator paint to a cell that lacks hot water. Nearly all cells were deemed to have “inadequate floor space.” There were no infractions in the kitchen or dining areas.
Speaking to The Times on Friday, Dukes County Sheriff Robert Ogden, recently sworn into the job, said repairs are a top priority, but the state funding for the DCHOC is based on inmate population, which makes funding repairs extremely difficult.
Fighting an antique
“My first day here, we walked around the facility and started to figure out what [repairs] we could accomplish within our fiscal budget,” Sheriff Ogden said. Mr. Ogden, a Sheriff’s Department officer for 26 years, was referring to his first visit after he was elected sheriff in November. “We’re really working to drill down on the issues the DPH brought before us.”
This year’s budget for the Dukes County Sheriff’s Department, which includes DCHC staff and operations and the Communications Center staff and operations, is $2.9 million, appropriated by the state legislature. Additional individual service agreement (ISA) grants from the state bring the total to roughly $3.4 million. Eighty percent of that sum goes to personnel expenses.
Mr. Ogden said a recently begun $70,000 project to repair longstanding leaks in the roof will help address several infractions listed on the DPH report.
“We’re trying to dry the place out and tighten it up,” he said. “There was considerable water damage in a portion of the facility, and I was able to acquire Division of Capital Assets Management and Maintenance (DCAMM) money to repair it. I said in my campaign that if I was elected, the project would get underway in my first month in office. I feel like I kept that promise.”
Also high on the list are an improved sprinkler system, an improved surveillance system, and an improved egress from the building.
Mr. Ogden said the battle to mitigate mold, a challenge in any Vineyard building, is made more difficult because the basement still has the original dirt floor.
“It was built in 1873, and it’s definitely showing its age. We’re fighting with an antique. We’ve got a lot of work to do structurally to make sure it is safe for the inmates and our employees,” he said. Getting state funding is a challenge.
“We’re trying to accomplish as much as we can with what we have. At the same time, Dukes County is very low in the pecking order when it comes to state funds,” he said. “The commonwealth identifies us as an outlier. We’re not a mainstream correctional facility. Before we came under the jurisdiction of the commonwealth as a county facility [in 2009], a lot of structural work was literally done by inmates. It’s hard, since we’ve become part of the state system; they do these reports, but then you have to beg for the money to make the repairs.”
Mr. Ogden said that in addition to the DCHOC having outlier status among state correctional facilities, correctional facilities on the whole are low on the list for state funds.
“We’re on the same list as public schools, hospitals, and government buildings,” he said. “It was explained to me as I was taking office, if something goes wrong in the public school system, they’ll picket on Beacon Hill. If it’s about healthcare and hospitals, people will be up here screaming at the top of their lungs, but when they look at corrections, no one shows up.”
Mr. Ogden said the Island factor also comes into play, even after funding is awarded, because finding licensed contractors to do the work presents additional challenges.
“We put the roof into the state bid system as we’re required to do, and nobody came back with a bid. Nobody wanted to come to the Island to do the work,” he said.
Resolving the numerous violations for inadequate floor space will be the most difficult issue to address, Mr. Ogden said. The average cell size at the DCHOC is approximately 58 to 64 square feet, while state regulations require at least 70 square feet of floor space per occupant, and in multiple-occupancy areas, the rooms must provide at least 25 square feet of unencumbered space per occupant.
“Our cells are undersized, to say the least, especially when you consider times of high occupancy, when multiple occupants are required,” he said. “The building was state of the art in 1873, but trying to move granite and brick walls will be very difficult.”
Mr. Ogden said there are currently 21 inmates at DCHC. The average is between 15 and 25, with a spike in numbers during the summer.
Mr. Ogden cited the state-of-the-art Barnstable County Correctional Facility, which was built in 2004, replacing a building from the 1930s, as an example of what can be done with adequate funding.
During his campaign, Mr. Ogden advocated the construction of a new DCHOC in a nonresidential area.
“That definitely won’t happen in my first term,” he said.
Housing shortage hits home
According to state funding criteria, which are based on the inmate-to-personnel ratio, the DCHOC is considered overfunded.
“The state operates on a bizarre formula based on inmate to personnel,” Mr. Ogden said. “When they look at us, we’re constantly ‘over personnel.’ They don’t take into consideration cost of living, the cost of housing, or the age of the facility. They don’t even take the telecommunications center into consideration. But we’re somehow identified as being overfunded.”
Mr. Ogden said the pay scale for Dukes County Sheriff’s Office (DCSO) employees is on par with sheriff’s departments across the state, and housing costs on Martha’s Vineyard factor heavily into a high attrition rate in his department.
“Housing is a huge factor; we lose people because of it all the time,” he said. “So many staff can’t afford to live here, and they move away. That in turn makes us like a training facility for other houses of correction. People we’ve trained here are constantly leaving the Island for Barnstable or Plymouth or elsewhere, because they just can’t afford it on the Vineyard. Since we can’t keep up on staffing, we end up paying an immense amount of overtime, and that eats up a lot of that money that could go into upgrading the facility.”
Mr. Ogden said the housing shortage has also made it difficult to retain 911 dispatchers at the Communications Center.
“There’s so much turnover that our staff is working 50 to 60 hours a week on a regular basis,” he said. “When we hire someone, they go away for six weeks of training, and then there’s six months of training onsite until they’re officially dispatchers. So there’s a long lag period between when we hire someone until they get into the seat.”