By KEVIN KRAUSE / The Dallas Morning News
kkrause@dallasnews.com

After years of failed jail inspections, Dallas County commissioners are going in a new direction: They want to hire a consultant to oversee all jail improvements and ensure a passing grade for the first time since 2003.

The commissioners voted Tuesday to enter into negotiations with Carl R. Griffith & Associates of Port Arthur for a jail-consulting contract. County officials don't know yet how much the contract will cost.

Carl Griffith, the firm's president and chief executive, was Jefferson County's sheriff for eight years and its county judge for a decade. He also served for two years as chairman of the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education.

Dallas County Judge Jim Foster said Griffith has a good relationship with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which in March handed the county its seventh failed inspection in six years.

The nine-member jail commission recently got a new chairwoman, and four new members have been appointed since last year.

"We need to do everything we can to build a relationship with the jail commission," Foster said.

Midland County work

Griffith said his firm recently helped Midland County reduce its jail population.

"I absolutely think we could help them with their jail," he said about Dallas County.

Commissioner Mike Cantrell said he envisions the firm acting as a project manager for all the jail fixes that are in the works. He said he would like Griffith to tour the jails, examine all the recent state inspection reports and tell the court how he can help.

Cantrell said he appreciates all the work Commissioner John Wiley Price has taken on to help improve the jails. But the county needs a new perspective, he said.

"That isn't his full-time job," he said about Price.

The commissioners and Sheriff Lupe Valdez have been asked to attend the jail commission's meeting Thursday in Austin to explain what's being done to address serious life-safety problems in the county's largest jail tower.

The north tower's smoke-detection and removal system is not working properly and could require extensive work. The county is putting in place a temporary manual system until the repair work can begin.

On Tuesday, the commissioners said sheriff's jail guards will need to be trained to use that manual system, which will consist of large fans with air hoses attached to suck smoke out of the building.

Reducing bunks

Because of recurring problems with faulty fire-safety systems, the jail commissioners may force the county to reduce the number of bunks in north tower cells, meaning as many as 900 prisoners would have to be moved somewhere. Because of jail crowding when the north tower opened in 1994, county officials asked the jail commission for special permission to add more bunks than normally would be allowed in its cells.

State jail standards call for a minimum square footage in single and group cells to allow enough space for inmates to move around.

County officials say they intend to show the jail commissioners all they've done to fix the problems.

"We've been extremely responsive," Price said.

But Commissioner Ken Mayfield voiced concern over exactly how much work will be necessary to fix the north tower's 15-year-old smoke-removal system – a complex pneumatic system that uses compressed air to move numerous interconnected parts.

"We've been responsive, we just haven't been successful," he said. "It's time to be successful."

Dale Lilly, who heads the new jail maintenance team, told the commissioners that unlike the older west tower jail, the north tower jail's air ducts and exhaust fans do not need to be replaced.

The county's plan for fixing the smoke-removal system is to hire a firm to do air balancing and then test it to see what else needs to be done. Air balancing is a system of making sure you suck out a little more air than you pump into a cell so that smoke doesn't drift into hallways and other cells.