DATE: Friday, October 10, 1997              TAG: 9710100004

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   50 lines

NORFOLK CITY JAIL ALMOST SQUARED AWAY A NEW SHERIFF AND A NEW WING HAVE REMEDIED MOST OF THE PROBLEMS AT THE MUNICIPAL LOCKUP. NOW THE CITY, AT LONG LAST, WILL FINISH THE JOB.

Pressured by the U.S. Justice Department, whose inspectors documented multiple horrors during Sheriff David K. Mapp's inept regime, Norfolk has agreed to spend $2.5 million to improve safety-and-health conditions in the original section of the city jail. In exchange, the feds will not sue the city for trampling the civil rights of inmates.

Norfolk voters showed Sheriff Mapp the door in 1993, handing the keys to the jail to Republican Robert McCabe, who has worked with the city to set things right. After he took office, McCabe invited the media into the jail to acquaint the public with the mess he inherited.

With all deliberate speed, McCabe ended chaos, squalor, unruliness and confusion. He issued written policies and procedures applicable to staff and inmates; there had been none. He instituted computerized record-keeping. He fired the medical contractor. He privatized the food service. A favorably impressed City Hall authorized compensation for deputies that supplemented the state's check, with the result that rapid turnover of personnel slowed.

Meanwhile, Norfolk invested $24.9 million in jail expansion and signed on with Portsmouth, Newport News and Hampton as partners in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail under construction in Portsmouth.

This newspaper's exposes of inhumane jail conditions - shameful by even minimal measures of civilization - shocked the electorate and City Hall. Under Virginia's peculiar system of constitutional officers, jail-keepers - sheriffs - are elected and independent. Some jail-keepers are good at their job, some are not. In McCabe, Norfolk voters chose well. He is unopposed for re-election in November.

Overcrowding was a chronic problem when the late Charles Leavitt ran the jail. It worsened during Mapp's reign and into the McCabe years, in part because the state prison system did not remove convicted felons from local jails in a timely way. That's changed. The enlarged Norfolk jail's rated capacity is 909 inmates, but constitutionally permissible double bunking allows 1,500 beds. The inmate total this week is close to 1,500. When the regional jail is completed next year, Norfolk will gain 250 beds in the new facility.

The improvements that City Hall is committed to make will take about 18 months. Under the agreement shaped by mediation between the city and the Justice Department, the city must upgrade toilet, shower, electrical and automatic-sprinkler infrastructure and enhance air circulation on three floors of the old section of the jail. About time.

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