The Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office this week is hosting a national course for jail administrators responsible for ensuring that their facilities are operating legally and humanely.
The training is a collaboration with the National Institute of Corrections and the American Jail Association.
About 186 people are incarcerated at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility in Bourne (capacity: 588). But there is also a staff working around the clock to manage inmate behavior, safety, sanitation, and other concerns. "We are essentially a small city," Sheriff Donna Buckley told Morning Edition host Patrick Flanary.
"Our jails have become de facto mental-health and addiction treatment centers, and they're not built for that," said Buckley, who was elected sheriff last year.
"We need more resources and a better ability to obtain mental-health and addiction treatment programming. And if those supports are not present, then it doesn't matter how successful we are with someone while they're here if we can't ensure that those supports are available when someone is released."
Treatment has been conducted in-house since August, which Buckley said will ensure better inmate care and rehabilitation ahead of release.
"The punishment is losing your freedom," Buckley said. "But from that moment forward the work of all of our jails needs to be, 'How do you build people back up so that they can reintegrate and not re-offend?'"
