NCJ Number
229848
Journal
Corrections Today Volume: 71 Issue: 5 Dated: October 2009 Pages: 60-63
Date Published
October 2009
Length
4 pages
Annotation
After an overview of the American Correctional Association's (ACA's) efforts to develop national minimum jail standards, this article describes the field testing of the ACA's core jail standards with the Mackinac County Jail (Michigan), the lessons learned in the testing, and next steps for Mackinac County.
Abstract
The movement to develop national minimum jail standards began several years ago when the ACA asked the American Jail Association (AJA) and the National Sheriffs' Association (NSA) to assist in developing the Performance-Based Standards for Adult Local Detention Facilities, Fourth Edition (ALDF), which was published in 2002. The team that developed the ALDF urged the ACA to develop a new resource for jails in the form of national minimum jail standards. These "core" standards would describe everything that a jail of any size should do to operate a constitutional jail. The team that developed the ALDF standards identified the need for such standards and made the first attempt to identify the "core" standards in 2001. A working group composed of jail administrators and sheriffs worked on the standards in 2008. Another working group finished the development process in 2009. When the final draft of the core jail standards was completed in May 2009, it was compared to current Michigan jail standards. Michigan standards addressed less than 25 percent of the issues included in the core jail standards. In May 2009, the ACA asked Mackinac County to field test the final draft of the core jail standard. This was the only field test site, and the Mackinac County Jail was the first in the United States to receive accreditation under the new standards. For Mackinac County, the next step is to maintain full compliance with the standards and monitor the compliance internally. 2 figures