Three inmates have died in Broward jails in the past month. Is it time for oversight?
An inmate died in the Broward Main Jail this week. His death — part of a recent string of fatalities — is raising questions about mounting troubles in the county’s jail facilities.
On Monday, Joseph Kirk, an inmate at the main jail’s detoxification unit, died while at the hospital. The 34-year-old was arrested last week on the misdemeanor charge of resisting an officer without violence. The Public Defender’s Office believes that Kirk died due to smuggled drugs or improper detox protocols.
He’s one of 21 inmates who have died while being held in a Broward facility since 2021.
“The jail needs oversight,” Broward Public Defender Gordon Weekes told the Miami Herald. “It needs oversight from experts or some agency at the federal level.”
READ MORE: Investigation begins after Broward inmate dies in hospital, sheriff’s office says
Weekes said he toured the main jail on Tuesday and was especially alarmed about the conditions in the detox unit. Inmates, he said, were lying down with sheets covering their entire bodies. It was difficult to observe from a distance whether they were breathing.
Among his concerns with the unit: the protocols in place.
“It’s a very painful process to detox without any proper medication,” he said. “If you don’t have a proper protocol, ...the protocol becomes observation and hydration.”
String of deaths at Broward jails
In late December, Alvin Stephen Modeste hung himself in his cell at the North Broward Bureau, which primarily houses inmates with mental health issues and special needs. The 43-year-old was set to be evaluated for competency in his culpable negligence case the following week.
A few days prior, 29-year-old Janard Geffrard was found unresponsive on the floor of his cell almost half an hour after being attacked. Deputies say cellmate Kevin Barnes, 35, placed Geffrard in a chokehold and stomped his feet on Geffrard’s head and upper torso.
READ MORE: Broward inmate attacked by cellmate, deputies say. It’s part of jail’s troubled history
The attack came a month after Barnes was deemed incompetent due to mental illness in a probation violation and grand theft auto case from September. Geffrard was also found incompetent in November in a burglary case from June that was being heard in mental health court.
A detention deputy and a detention technician were placed on administrative investigative leave with pay after Geffrard’s death. But the jails are understaffed, with the main jail being about 15% short in staffing, according to Weekes.
“Something’s going on in the jail that is creating this repeated pattern,” Weekes previously told the Miami Herald.
