Woman accidentally is put into male cellblock at Marion County Jail

When a Marion County Jail guard inadvertently locked a male inmate and a female inmate in the same cell last summer, leading to the woman claiming the man sexually assaulted her, Sheriff John Layton demanded action.

Layton reprimanded the three deputies working the area and ordered them to undergo remedial training.

He implemented new cell block policies, including a requirement that labeled and color-coded signage be displayed on all blocks.

He swore he would work to prevent such a mix-up from ever happening again.

But eight months later, it did.

The Sheriff’s Office has launched an internal investigation to figure out why on Tuesday a woman was put in the wrong cell block — this time, one with nine men.

Lt. Col. Gary Tingle, the jail division commander, said investigators are not yet sure how long the woman spent in the cell. She has not alleged any wrongdoing on the part of the other inmates.

“As to what caused it, that is still being investigated,” Tingle said. “We haven’t come to a conclusion at this time.”

Although the course of events are unclear, some details have emerged.

The mix-up happened sometime between 8 and 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, when the 28-year-old inmate was supposed to have been escorted to a cell block for females following her trip to the jail’s medical office.

Instead, someone took her to a dormitory-style cell block for men. Once inside, the woman realized she was in the wrong place and called her mother to complain, she later told investigators.

Jail officers realized the error, Tingle said, after they received a call from the woman’s attorney.

But how did a female inmate end up with a group of men in the first place?

“It’s a complicated issue,” Tingle said. “The facility is antiquated. It’s old. We don’t have enough space for the number of inmates that we currently house, and so we’re constantly changing our cell blocks in order to accommodate the number of beds that we have.”

A statement from Layton’s office chalked the incident up to the same issue: “chronic jail overcrowding.”

At the time of the incident, Tingle said Marion County Jail I was holding 936 inmates, 264 of them female.

All of the jail’s 71 cell blocks are designated for a specific purpose — men in the general population, women in the general population, or men with mental health issues, as examples.

Some of those blocks, however, are switched to a different purpose depending on the jail’s need. So a cell block that is one day being used to house men can the next day be switched and used to house women, Tingle said.

On average, Tingle said a cell block can change functions about six times per week, sometimes as many as two or three times per day.

Tingle said officials keep note of each cell’s designation using a spreadsheet. Before last summer’s incident, the block classifications were kept in a main control area, but Tingle said since then jail officials have implemented more safeguards, such as displaying signs outside each cell block.

In this case, Tingle said that sign was properly displayed. But it’s unclear why that wasn’t noticed by the official who took the woman to the wrong cell.

“We’re trying to figure out why that was ignored or missed,” Tingle said.

Once the woman was inside the block, Tingle said the official might not have realized the mistake. Inmates need to pass through two sets of doors to reach the cell block, which separates them from the officers. The process can leave other inmates already inside the block out of an official’s sight.

“It helps from a safety standpoint,” Tingle said. “If inmates wanted to do harm to an officer, he’s not opening the door and going directly into a cell block with them. We have that extra layer between them and us.”

Jim White, a former Indiana State Police officer who lectures in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, credited the Sheriff’s Office for quickly correcting the error once it was discovered but said there needs to be a review of jail policies and procedures to keep similar mistakes from happening.

If the woman was placed in the wrong cell because of a human error, corrective action will have to be taken against the personnel involved, White said.

“You’ll have to go back and investigate why it happened again,” White said, “and make appropriate changes if needed.”

He added that with the number of people that go through the Marion County Jail on a daily basis, mistakes can be inevitable.

“There’s no such thing as perfect,” he said. “The positive thing here is that they’re recognizing the mistake.”

During the incident last July, a jail guard locked a male inmate in a cell that was already holding a female inmate. The two inmates were left alone together for as long as five minutes after the male inmate sent the guard on an errand within the jail.

Officials said while the cell had been used for holding men earlier in the day, it had since been converted for holding women.

The woman claimed the man sexually assaulted her, but charges were never filed. When outside investigators were brought in to investigate her claim, the woman refused to cooperate and a rape test proved inconclusive.

Family members of the woman involved in Tuesday’s incident declined to comment Wednesday but said the woman was still incarcerated.

In an emailed statement, Sheriff’s Office officials said the best fix for the problem is “a modern jail, properly equipped with up-to-date technology which ensures proper separation of inmates.”

City officials have proposed a $400 million justice center that would relocate most of Marion County’s Downtown jail and court facilities to a property along the White River that once housed a GM stamping plant.

Layton’s office also is considering other actions, “including deputy discipline, a new color jumpsuit for Jail I females, and designating specific areas of Jail I as permanent female only areas.”

“That’s what we’re looking at right now to see if it is feasible in order for us to do this,” Tingle said. “We’re studying a lot of different options.”

Star reporter Kristine Guerra and Star researcher Cathy Knapp contributed to this story. Call Star reporter Jill Disis at (317) 444-6137. Follow her on Twitter: @jdisis.