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A Matter of Trust

Cover Story [read from original site here.]

A Matter of Trust


Sheriff Jack Cottey, a Multimillion Dollar Trust Fund

and the Brutal World of the Marion County Lockup


By Fran Quigley


It would be hard to convince people who have spent time in the Marion County Lockup that they were the beneficiaries of a multimillion dollar trust fund.

When John Hughes (an alias) was nearly beaten to death in the lockup, he saw no evidence of an inmate trust. He just knew there were no guards available to stop the dozens of uninterrupted kicks and punches by his cellmates that left John's nose, jaw and eye socket crushed. While David Hoffman slept for days on the lockup's sticky concrete floor without so much as a mat on which he could lay his head, he saw no dividends from inmate collect calls fees funneling into coffers controlled by Marion County Sheriff Jack Cottey.

No mention of these funds was made to Ryan Downey and his cellmates as they tried to maneuver around a pile of human feces stacked high in the steel toilet of their lockup cell. Likewise, when Kristan Stewart and Angela Hamilton (who prefer their real names not be used) were in the lockup and unable to get access to tampons to stop them from soiling their clothes or a telephone to call their family for help, they failed to enjoy any benefit from an inmate trust fund.

But NUVO's ongoing investigation of Cottey's administration of the lockup has revealed that a Marion County Jail Commissary Trust does exist. Further, the fund is annually replenished with millions of dollars diverted from collect call fees incurred by the very inmates who live in squalor and fear in the sub-basement of the City-County Building. Rather than directing this money to the benefit of inmates whose families pay collect call fees that can be as high as $3.25 for the first minute, Cottey uses much of the fund to boost his public profile and increase the comfort of the highest echelons of the sheriff's administration.


A Captive Market


The primary source of the bulging coffers of the Jail Commissary Trust is a series of lucrative contracts entered into between Cottey and Ameritech. In exchange for the exclusive right to provide telephone service to the inmates of the lockup, jail and other inmate holding areas operated by the sheriff, Ameritech paid a $524,000 bonus to the Jail Commissary Trust in 1995, the first year of Cottey's administration. In return for agreeing to a three-year extension of this contract in 1997, the sheriff collected a $786,000 bonus payable to the trust. In addition, the sheriff receives 40 percent of the gross receipts for all inmate telephone calls.

For their part, Ameritech and other telephone service providers are eager to make such arrangements because the inmates constitute a literally captive telephone market who have no choice but to pay high fees if they want to speak to their family, friends or lawyers.

Those fees add up. Public records obtained by NUVO indicate that from 1996 through 1998, the sheriff collected over $ 5.5 million from collect call fees to use at his discretion. In contrast, Gov. Frank O'Bannon has $*,***,*** in funds to use at his discretion.


Sheriff's Inmate Call Revenues 1996-1998

1996 -- $1,755,794.47

1997 -- $1,799,180.70

1998 -- $1,975,394.10

Source: Marion County Sheriff's Department


The common understanding in county government is that these funds are reserved for uses that will improve the conditions of the inmates whose families pay the telephone fees. City-County Councilman William Dowden, chairman of the Council's Public Safety Committee that oversees the Sheriff's Department, assured NUVO that the trust was operated "for the enhancement of the lifestyle and for amenities and extras for the prisoners." Indeed, Cottey himself replied to NUVO's public records request in part by insisting that the trust is used for the "betterment" of the jail and lockup inmates.

But the conditions of the lockup suggest that much of this bounty is not spent for the benefit of those inmates. A NUVO investigation has revealed that, while a limited portion of the trust is devoted to expenses such as jail food trays or inmate rule books, a large portion of the funds are spent on items that have no direct impact on the inmates' "betterment." Cottey insists that trust funds not spent on the inmates are used for the benefit of the Sheriff's Department. However, many of the trust purchases most directly benefit the public profile of the sheriff himself and the comfort of the highest level of the sheriff's administration.


Inmate "Betterment"?


Some of the largest expenditures from the Jail Commissary Trust over the past three years include thousands of dollars spent on travel and leased vehicle expenses for Sheriff Department executives, maintenance and storage fees for the sheriff's airplane, travel expenses to the World Police and Fire Games and expensive new furniture for executive offices.

Nearly a quarter-million dollars was spent on a variety of promotional material, including Cottey trading cards, "Junior Deputy" badges and stickers and a wide range of McGruff the Crime Dog promotions, including McGruff dolls, a McGruff newsletter and even a McGruff golf cart. The trust also pays the programming and server costs for the sheriff's Web site, whose home page is dominated by a picture of Cottey and his wife and a warm biography of the sheriff.


Some Purchases From the Jail Commissary Trust; 1995-98


McGruff and Jr. Deputy expenses (dolls, newsletters, golf cart, trading cards) $221,833.54


Executive travel (leased vehicles, conference and travel expenses, travel to World Police & Fire Games) $71,160.50


Aircraft maintenance and insurance $4,382.59


New furniture and renovation of executive offices $24,850.63


Web site programming and server cost $4,200


Coverage of shortages in 1998 regular sheriff budget $206,064


Donut machine $3,970


Source: Marion County Sheriff's Department


Cottey's critics say many of these investments have helped his political career at least as much as they have contributed to fighting crime. Cottey was overwhelmingly reelected to a second term as Marion County sheriff in 1998. A former five-term state representative, Cottey is the Warren Township Republican chairman and a growing force in the embroiled world of Marion County Republican party politics. His critics say that Cottey clearly understands the electoral value of trust expenditures like the personalized Web site and the McGruff paraphernalia.


Meanwhile, Back In the Sub-Basement ...


From the perspective of the grim confines of the holding cells in the sub-basement of the City-County Building, it does not appear that either Cottey or McGruff has shared much of their collect call windfall with the inmates in the lockup. Last month, NUVO published a series of articles on the filthy and frightening conditions of the lockup, telling the stories of victims of violent beatings and people who slept for days on concrete floors in soiled clothing. Since the lockup is a holding area for people recently arrested, many of the lockup inmates face these conditions but are never charged or convicted of any crime.

Since the publication of these articles, NUVO has been contacted by attorneys, former lockup inmates, bail bondsmen and jail vendors who affirmed the articles' description of the lockup's many problems. Through discussions with attorneys who have visited similar institutions throughout the country, it appears that Indianapolis may be home to one of the worst temporary holding facilities in the United States.

One of the persistent criticisms of Cottey's administration of the lockup has been the extreme disorganization that prevents recently arrested people from being released for hours after they have posted bond. Computers constantly crash and incarcerated people get lost in the shuffle. Angela Hamilton, a 22-year-old college student from an upper middle-class Indianapolis family, learned about the bewildering nature of the lockup after being arrested on an allegation of drunk driving two weekends ago.

Angela was stunned by the contrast between the lockup and the popular conceptions of jail situations. "My impression of jails from TV and movies was that the first thing you get is a phone call. I sat in the lockup from the middle of the night until the next afternoon, and I was never allowed to use a phone to tell my family I had been arrested."

After being told she would be released within an hour or two, Angela instead waited 10 more hours while her family frantically tried to find her. Finally, a lockup official walked up to the cell Angela had been in for 12 hours. "There you are," he said in surprise. "We've been looking for you all over."


Answering To No One


Cottey's reasons for not directing the trust money to address the problems of the lockup are unknown. The sheriff has refused NUVO's request for an interview about the lockup conditions and his use of the Jail Commissary Trust. More surprising, the sheriff apparently doesn't have to answer to anyone else either. In researching this article, NUVO contacted the State Board of Accounts, the City-County Council, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, the Marion County Commissioners and the Marion County Auditor, and all stated they were powerless to review Cottey's administration of the Jail Commissary Trust.

As for the collection of the money to fund the trust, neither the initial Ameritech contract or the 1997 renewal were ever subject to a bidding process. The law exempts service contracts from bidding requirements, but the lack of competition for the lucrative jail phone contracts has angered many smaller providers of telephone services.

As for the sheriff's use of the money placed in the trust, the Indiana General Assembly has allowed Indiana sheriffs to use jail commissary funds "at their discretion" without the need for appropriation by any other agency. Even so, the same law requires Indiana's sheriffs to submit a record of their trust receipts and disbursements to the State Board of Accounts and their county's fiscal agency for review.

A public records investigation indicates that Cottey fails to comply with these requirements. The sheriff and other Marion County agencies skirt the State Board of Accounts by submitting their records instead to a private auditing firm, a practice described in previous NUVO articles concerning the City of Indianapolis, which hasn't had an independent audit for the last 14 years. Similarly, Marion County's Auditor and Commissioners could not find any evidence that the sheriff provided them with an accounting of his use of the Jail Commissary Trust.


"It's Just Stealing From Poor People, That's What It Is"


Since Cottey would not grant an interview for this article, the best evidence of his rationale for the use of the trust comes from his written reply to NUVO's public records request for the trust revenue and expenditures. Cottey wrote, "I firmly believe that the taxpayers of this county, who are forced to support inmates in this jail 24 hours a day, seven days a week for crimes they have committed against citizens, certainly would support our continuing efforts to make inmates foot some of the bill."

But families of inmates and their advocates say Cottey is wrong, because it is not the inmates who are footing the bill. They point out that it is the low-income families of inmates, not the inmates themselves, who usually pay the high collect call fees. Those fees can be a substantial burden to a family already struggling to pay rent and buy food while a provider is imprisoned.

Families will get a phone call out of the blue with a recorded message stating, "This is a call from a correctional institution. If you accept this call, you will be charged $3.25." The call does not indicate who the caller is.

One of the people who pays the phone fees is Deborah Sims, whose son has been incarcerated in both the lockup and the jail. In a low and weary voice the listener has to strain to hear, she explains the obligation she feels to accept her son's collect calls so as to assure him that someone on the "outside" still cares about him. But she sometimes has to pay an hour's wages to Ameritech just to cover the cost of a local call, and she hardly thinks it fair. "The people the inmates are calling have committed no crime," she says. "So why should we be punished?"

One local criminal defense lawyer is more blunt in his assessment. "It's just stealing from poor people, that's what it is. The sheriff ought to be ashamed of himself."

Advocates for inmates insist that Cottey's collect call funds have the potential to greatly benefit the inmates and the community as a whole. Lynn McDowell, a former prosecutor who now supervises Indiana University Law School students representing lockup and jail inmates, says she too often sees the same people return to crime after being released. McDowell thinks this recidivism rate could be reduced if the sheriff used some of the trust to provide substance abuse treatment, education and anger control counseling to the inmates who badly need it. Despite the millions of dollars flowing into the trust, she says such programs currently do not exist. "As it is now in Marion County, they get nothing."

Deborah Sims looks at the numbers on her phone bill, considers her son's experience in the lockup and agrees that the collect call fees could be spent more wisely preventing inmates from preying on the community once they are released. "I've seen statistics on how often people commit crimes after they are let out," she says. "You lock them in there and you treat them like animals, so how do you think they are going to act when they are set free?"

posted by Bob Cardwell @ 11:36 AM