Ombudsman: Some Iowa jailers punished inmates with restraints

State correctional officials should tighten their requirements for restraining unruly jail inmates and improve help for those with mental illness to stem potentially abusive use of the restraints in county jails, a state Ombudsman's Office investigation has found.

Those conclusions cap a four-year investigation into incidents reported at the Boone and Webster county jails, in which inmates claimed they were repeatedly restrained in chairs for many hours, sometimes without food, water or bathroom breaks.

Further, despite a clear requirement in state law that the full-body restraints be used only for safety or security concerns, they were sometimes instead used punitively in Webster County, the office found.

The recent spate of four complaints is detailed in a report that State Ombudsman Bernardo Granwehr released Thursday. His office is an independent state agency that investigates a wide variety of complaints against state and local governments.

Granwehr noted that jailers' use of restraints — which he described as a "controversial tool" — had improved since his office released a detailed report in 2009 about other alleged abuses. But that after more than a decade, similar incidents had surfaced.

"To some extent, a resurgence of complaints could be expected as personnel changes, retirements and local elections create turnover over time," Granwehr said in the report. "Memories fade, institutional knowledge is lost, and we sometimes fail to learn from past mistakes."

Iowa county jails are overseen by local, elected sheriffs.

Granwehr's office made several recommendations in the report for county jails and for the state Department of Corrections that sets many of their rules, including requiring mental health screenings for all inmates, periodic medical examinations of restrained inmates and more-specific guidelines for the use of restraints.

The office also suggested all restraint incidents should be video-recorded in full, and that those recordings should be retained for at least two years — the statutory limit for lawsuits that might stem from them. Of the incidents the office investigated, few recordings were provided.

Those in charge of the jails that were subject to the investigations diverged in their responses to the ombudsman's conclusions.

Webster County Sheriff Luke Fleener said much of his jail staff in Fort Dodge — many not employed by his office when the 2009 report was released — have received restraint training and will repeat it annually.

The video surveillance system at the Webster jail also was upgraded, and restraint incidents have been more thoroughly documented.

"We will always collaborate with the Ombudsman's Office to resolve any concerns expressed by our jail population," Fleener wrote to the office, noting "your staff have taken a commonsense approach."

Boone County was more combative.

Cole Hoffman, the Boone County sheriff's chief deputy and jail administrator, accused the office of bias and of presenting a one-sided view of the situation to "further an agenda," in his written response.

"The importance of the operational responsibilities of jailers needs to be emphasized, particularly in high-stress situations involving combative or intoxicated individuals," he wrote.

Boone County Jail

The first complaint that was investigated as part of the report — and the only one of the four that pertained to Boone County — was submitted to the Ombudsman's Office in February 2020.

The report did not describe what alleged crimes led to the complainants being jailed, and the ombudsman concealed their full names in his report.

The Boone jail restraints happened in December 2019 to an inmate identified as Jim, who was "suffering from a mental health crisis," the investigation concluded.

Jim was restrained four times in five days for his self-harming behavior. He was restrained for a total of about 14 hours, strapped to a chair, one of those days.

He had repeatedly struck his head against a door and floor, talked about killing himself, spit on an officer and attempted to cut his wrists with a dinner plate and a door latch.

The ombudsman noted the jail did not evaluate Jim's mental health when he arrived, and "we are disappointed that staff seemingly did not attempt to conduct an evaluation at a later time." State law requires jails to provide access to mental health services tor inmates.

A jail nurse tended to his wounds, which included a cut on his head.

There were lapses in the jail’s records of Jim's restraints and no video to verify what had happened. The ombudsman's office requested the video about four months after the man's incarceration, but it had already been deleted.

It also did not appear that the Boone jail had reported Jim's restraints to the state's jail inspector as required by law, the report said.

Webster County Jail

The three complaints that were investigated in Webster County — for incarcerations starting in August and September 2022 and August 2023 — appeared to have been spurred by bad behavior rather than safety concerns.

In one case, an inmate was restrained naked in a chair in a "heavily trafficked booking area" for a time before he was moved to a cell where he remained that way for about five hours, the report said. That happened after he removed a safety smock he had agreed to wear, clogged a toilet and obscured a security camera in his cell.

"The only covering placed on him was a spit mask to prevent him from spitting on the wall," according to the report.

He was restrained in the chair a total of seven times during his three-week jail stint because he had "continued to violate the rules." That included kicking his cell door, throwing his shoes and toilet paper, stomping on a desk and threatening the jail staff.

Another inmate was restrained in a chair nine times during one jail stay for periods that approached up to 14 hours, for outbursts that included property destruction, yelling and assaults of jail employees.

One of the restraints — which lasted more than nine hours — was the result of a threat if jail staff "did not have a cleaning cart ready for him in 10 minutes," the report said.

A third inmate was restrained in a chair continuously for eight hours after he assaulted the interim jail administrator — with no breaks to stretch or use a bathroom — even though he was calm for most of that time.

"The restraint chair in these instances appears to have been used as a form of punishment for the inmates’ behavior," the report concluded.

Other jails

The ombudsman's office polled at least 15 other county jails to determine how many times they had deployed restraint chairs in 2022, according to the report.

Many of them, including those that have a much larger capacity, used the chairs sparingly, the report said. They often opted to put problem inmates in cells with padded walls instead.

Webster County has one of those, whereas Boone does not. For 2022, the Boone jail reported it used a restraint chair once, whereas Webster used one 26 times. Both jails had the same capacity of 56 inmates.

In Johnson County, where the jail capacity was about 64 percent larger than Webster's, jailers used a restraint chair about the same number of times. But the Johnson jail administrator reported that the longest duration of restraint was 2 1/2 hours.

Capt. John Good, the jail's administrator, told The Gazette that chairs are used as a last resort, often after handcuffs or stun guns are ineffective to diffuse confrontations or mental health crises. He said the chairs are effective if used properly, and "once you put them in the chair, you need to start thinking about getting them out as fast as possible."

Linn County used its restraint chair once in 2022, Sheriff Brian Gardner told The Gazette. It is reserved for "truly uncontrollable" inmates, he said.

Instead, Linn jailers most often use pepper spray.

"We have found that, overwhelmingly, the threat of the use itself or the actual use and then subsequent decontamination takes the fight out of people," Gardner said.

His office documented 28 uses of pepper spray in 2022.

The Polk County Jail — the state's largest with a capacity of about 1,500 — used restraint chairs 11 times in 2022.

"We make every attempt to get inmates out of the safety chair at the one-hour mark," the Polk jail reported.

The ombudsman recommended that jails have clear policies about the use of restraints only when there is an imminent safety or security risk, and that inmates should be released from the restraints as soon as that threat has subsided.

He also recommended jails use robust mental health screenings for incoming inmates, and that inmates who show signs of mental illness get further assessment by a mental health professional.

Concerns about the use of restraints have gone beyond jails in recent years. In 2020, a federal judge ordered the State Training School for Boys in Eldora to cease some of its disciplinary measures, including a restraint device that wrapped around children's bodies.

The Girls State Training School in Toledo was closed in 2014 after employees there were fired for improper restraints. There were complaints at both facilities of inadequate care for children suffering from mental illness.

Comments: (319) 368-8541; jared.strong@thegazette.com