The Cook County Board of Commissioners held a hearing Wednesday on the health and safety of people incarcerated at the Cook County Jail in response to an Injustice Watch investigation which found 2023 was the deadliest year in the jail in at least three decades.
In its investigation, published in June, Injustice Watch looked into each of the 18 deaths at the jail last year and found examples of inadequate supervision and poor medical care in the lead up to half of them. In one case, 28-year-old Daniel Colon died in the bathroom of the jail’s detox unit after correctional officers left him there for seven hours as he suffered through severe withdrawal symptoms and pneumonia.
Colon’s sister and a handful of other family members of people who died at the jail last year stepped up to the podium to address the commissioners during the hearing’s public comment period. The county board didn’t officially invite any of the families to testify — those invitations only went to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jail, and Cook County Health, which runs the jail’s hospital — but their testimonies during public comment left commissioners shaken. Through tears and deep breaths, they used the three minutes allotted to them to describe the pain of losing their loved ones and to call out jail officials for failing to keep them safe.
“I have so much to say, but I only have one minute left,” said Nakisha Sampson, whose son Makavelle was held pretrial at the jail for six years before he died last year. The medical examiner determined he died from an overdose but also found a 2-inch-thick brain tumor — a significant factor behind his death that went undetected by the jail’s medical staff.
“I felt like his death could’ve been prevented if people would’ve taken him seriously,” Sampson said. “He had been complaining of severe headaches. He started having mental health issues. No one took him seriously.”
Commissioner Tara Stamps said testimony from Sampson and the other families turned the hearing into “one of the heaviest meetings I’ve participated in.”
She then questioned why Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, the county’s top law enforcement officer who’s overseen the jail for nearly two decades, wasn’t there to listen to them.
“My first question is where is Sheriff Dart? Is he supposed to be here?” Stamps asked jail officials representing Dart’s office at the hearing.
“This is one of the times that I personally would have wanted him to be present — to hear the testimony, the hurt of the families who’ve been impacted by the deaths of their loved ones in his care,” Stamps said.
Dart has not publicly addressed Injustice Watch’s findings or agreed to an interview. In response to questions about why he did not appear at the hearing, a spokesperson for Dart said, “The county board requested that the office educate them on what is being done to protect the health and safety of individuals in custody, and the office sent subject matter experts to address the county board’s questions.”
Jail officials blame staffing issues for ‘cross-watching’
Jane Gubser, executive director of the jail, and Jesus Estrada, chief operating officer for the jail’s hospital, Cermak Health Services, appeared at the hearing on behalf of their bosses.
They read from text-heavy PowerPoints outlining several policies and practices meant to protect the more than 40,000 people who go in and out of the Cook County Jail each year.
Gubser told commissioners and families present her team has taken steps to “try and mitigate deaths in custody” in the last few years, including better health screenings for detainees as they arrive at the jail, access to more mental health programs, strictly enforcing limits on detainees’ access to paper, and a “substantial expansion” of the jail’s live-video monitoring unit to catch “concerning behavior.”
Commissioner Stanley Moore, chairman of the board’s criminal justice committee, which convened the hearing, advised his colleagues at the start he would “shut down” any questions about specific deaths at the jail, citing pending and potential litigation against the county.
Later in the hearing, he nixed a question by Commissioner Anthony Quezada about whether “cross-watching” — a practice in which correctional officers are forced to supervise more than one tier during their shift — had played a role in any of the deaths last year. Dart said he would “work to eliminate” the practice more than a decade ago as part of court-ordered reforms after the U.S. Department of Justice found cross-watching led to “multiple preventable deaths” at the jail.
Injustice Watch found guards were cross-watching the tiers of at least four detainees on the days they died and failed to conduct wellness checks every 30 minutes as required by state law.
“Has there been a cross-analysis between the deaths that have occurred and whether or not cross-watching was being conducted at that time?” Quezada asked.
“Mr. Chairman, a point of order,” interjected Commissioner Scott Britton. “I do not believe that’s an appropriate question.”
Nicholas Scouffas, general counsel for the sheriff’s office, told commissioners cross-watching is used at the jail but wouldn’t say how often, and that it was primarily due to too many officers taking too many days off, facilitated by the structure of their union contract with the county.
“If not enough people come to work, cross-watching will be utilized if it’s necessary,” Scouffas said.
“One thing we know that hampers our ability to address staffing issues is the CBAs [collective bargaining agreements] and the language of the CBAs at this time. We’re entering a CBA negotiation period, and I encourage everybody here to look at how we are handling attendance, both from the day to day attendance, as well as kind of a larger-scale issue,” he said.
Martin O’Connor, whose older brother Michael died by suicide last Christmas while guards on his tier were cross-watching and failed to check on him for over an hour, criticized the sheriff’s office for still allowing the practice.
“I’m sure at some point, the sheriff’s going to get up here and tell all these great policies and procedures they have,” O’Connor said during the public comment period. “But here’s the issue: They don’t follow them.”
Drugs widely available at Cook County Jail, officials say
Jail officials focused a significant portion of their presentation on the issue of overdoses among jail detainees. Drug overdose was the primary cause of death for eight detainees in 2023, records show.
Between 2023 and 2024, 87 people were charged or indicted for allegedly trying to smuggle drugs into the jail, according to figures presented at the hearing by Jason Hernandez, executive director of intergovernmental affairs for the sheriff’s office — which represents “a fraction of the individuals who are trying to sell these drugs in the jail,” he said.
“I urge you all with your staff to come back to the Department of Corrections, so you can see with your own eyes the boxes and boxes of drugs we confiscate,” he added.
But despite the easy access to drugs at the jail, officials told commissioners they are unwilling to provide detainees with unfettered access to opiate-overdose-reversing medications, such as Narcan.
Instead, detainees can ask correctional officers — all of whom are trained on how to administer Narcan, officials said — to intervene after they suspect someone is having an overdose.
That system is flawed, said Rebecca Levin, a former top adviser to Dart on public health policy and the current vice president of policy at Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities, a Chicago nonprofit providing health recovery management services for people with substance use and mental health disorders in and out of custody.
“The easiest way to prevent fatal overdoses in Cook County Jail is to ensure that every person in the facility has ready access to opioid overdose reversal medications and training on how to use them,” including detainees, Levin said.
“Every overdose is a policy failure,” she said.
In 2021, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, the country’s standard bearer for quality of care behind bars, urged all jails and prisons to make Narcan kits and training available to incarcerated people.
Gubser, the jail’s executive director, said she feared unfettered access to Narcan would deter detainees from reporting overdoses, potentially delaying officers’ responses. She also noted many of the suspected overdoses at the jail are the result of detainees consuming drugs and other substances that are not opioids, such as synthetic cannabinoids.
“We have assessed the pros and cons of both opportunities, whether we were to allow people to have [Narcan] whenever they want, versus being able to monitor it, and most things that we do in Cook County Jail are done with the sense of monitoring and responding quickly,” Gubser said.
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