T-R FILE PHOTO — Marshall County recently terminated a jail holding agreement with the Meskwaki Nation after providing the services to the tribe for the last eight years. According to Tribal Council Chairman Vern Jefferson, new agreements with Polk and Hardin counties have been secured while the tribe explores the possibility of building its own facility.

MESKWAKI SETTLEMENT — As of this month, Marshall County has ended its jail holding contract with the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi, also known as the Meskwaki Nation, after providing the services for about eight years, but the tribal council has already made arrangements to house inmates in Polk and Hardin counties for now while exploring the potential of building its own facility in the future.

Marshall County Sheriff Joel Phillips provided a bit of history on the situation, noting that Marshall County, under the leadership of then-Sheriff Ted Kamatchus, agreed to house arrestees and prisoners for the tribe after a previous contract between the Meskwaki Nation and Iowa County was terminated back in 2015. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) continued with his successor, Steve Hoffman, and Phillips, who was appointed to the position in 2021 upon Hoffman’s resignation and won his first full term in office in the 2022 election.

“Over the last couple years there has been a substantial change in inmates that include mental health, substance abuse, and severity of medical/health ailments. This has increased the responsibility of our patrol, jail, and medical staff,” Phillips said.

The duties of the jail staff include inmate medical/court transports and medication pickups. Jailers are responsible for the health, safety, and wellbeing of inmates that include 24-hour monitoring for health (mental and physical) ailments/symptoms, injuries, and medication (including over the counter) disbursement. The medical staff is responsible for health screenings, immediate care, prescription verification/ordering and medical appointment scheduling (physical, substance abuse, and mental) that cannot be handled in the facility.

According to Phillips, inmates, some of whom were from the tribe, were coming into the jail with blood alcohol concentrations over three times the legal driving limit, and two suffered cardiac arrests that would require the use of CPR and AED applications along with Narcan, the nasal spray used to reverse opioid overdoses. Additionally, because tribal members are subject to court proceedings outside of the state and federal systems, the jail would often have to hold the inmates longer than they otherwise would.

“What we experienced on a weekly basis is (that) a Meskwaki arrestee would be brought to our facility by a Meskwaki PD officer on Tribal criminal charges on a Friday. Tribal court would not be held (on the Meskwaki Settlement) on weekends, which meant that person would spend the weekend in our facility until Monday, when the Meskwaki PD would transport the person to Tribal Court for an initial appearance on their charges,” Phillips said. “What we also were experiencing was that (the) person would have addictions to alcohol or controlled substances, and this would create medical concerns with withdrawal symptoms. This would then create additional work for our medical director, nurses, and jail staff to treat the individual while in our facility. In many cases, the person would need emergent care, which then initiated first responders (the Marshall County Jail falls in the State Center EMS district) to respond, treat and transport to UnityPoint Healthcare for advanced treatment. As you can expect, that increasingly adds responsibility to our first responders.”

While the county did collect fees for housing the inmates, Phillips said the strain of additional overtime and staffing sometimes created a loss per day. He also worried about the potential for lawsuits.

“An additional factor we considered is liability risk to Marshall County when housing outside inmates. We are living in an increasingly litigious society that we are not immune from, and with increasing health issues that may or may not be known comes exposure to risk that needs to be considered,” Phillips said. “It isn’t like television shows where intoxicated people go to jail to ‘sleep it off’ — with the level of intoxications and medical ailments we are seeing, there are serious health concerns while in our care.”

Marshall County Jail Administrator Patrick White first contacted the Meskwaki Nation Police Department in February of 2022 with some of these concerns and a message that the Marshall County Jail “is not a detoxification center.” Then, in the summer of 2023, the tribe was advised that Marshall County would be terminating the contract in October. Phillips said he was not aware of who they were now contracting with and noted that Marshall County had 148 inmate bookings for the MNPD in 2022, many of whom were four to six time repeat offenders.

“When housing arrestees for the Meskwaki PD that are coming directly to our facility, many times during our intake processing procedures, it is discovered the arrested person needs to be medically cleared due to their medical condition, involved in circumstances that required medical clearance, or health conditions that require continuous medication,” Phillips said. “We do house (inmates) for other outside agencies and are known for having the ability to deal with inmates that have behavioral problems… One of the major differences is (that) outside inmates are coming from correctional facilities after the inmate has been processed and a health screening has been completed. This is important when making a decision to provide housing for the agency, as we can determine if we have the space, (can) prepare resources that are needed for the care of the inmate and assess the risks that staff and Marshall County may be exposed to.”

In a statement, Meskwaki Tribal Council Chairman Vern Jefferson said MNPD Chief Jeff Bunn has worked to secure contracts with Hardin and Polk counties for the time being, but the council is interested in pursuing a more permanent remedy to the problem.

“We realize this too is not a long term solution, and so we are in the process of looking at other options including building our own facility,” Jefferson said. “Building our own facility will be beneficial to the community and could result in long term cost savings for the tribe.”

Constructing a standalone jail on the Settlement, Jefferson noted, would “add one more piece to the tribe’s criminal justice system as well as restore some of the tribe’s sovereignty.” The Settlement is home to more than 1,000 enrolled members and provides 24-hour police protection to both its residents and those who visit the Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel.

“Having a holding facility on the Settlement will allow our officers to have better turnaround time after arrests and will increase employment on the Settlement as corrections officers will need to be hired for the new facility,” Jefferson said. “Once (individuals are) incarcerated, it will be easier for families to visit without having to travel great distances. It’s a win-win situation on multiple levels for the tribal community.”

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.