Inmate Inquiry website back up; County complies with FOIA with physical jail log
By Mike McCombs
The Island News
Beaufort County breathed a big sigh of relief Monday morning, July 21.
It was back.
Down since the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 17, the Beaufort County Detention Center’s online Inmate Inquiry System was functioning again.
And that’s a really good thing. But not for the reason most people care about.
For the uninitiated, the site allows users to search the current population of the Beaufort County Detention Center, as well as peruse the list of anyone who may have been booked into the facility in the past 90 days.
It’s a wealth of information. It lists the inmates, their personal information, such as their address and birthdate, as well as all of their arrest information, such as the arresting agency and officer, time, the specific charges and whether or not bond has been set or at what dollar amount it is set. And of course, it provides the basic info – when were they booked, are they still detained, and if not, when they were released.
It also tells you if an ICE Hold has been placed on an inmate, which seems to be a much more relevant than usual detail in the current political climate.
Oh, and the elephant in the room. The site also includes the inmates’ booking mugshots.
This is why people generally care about the Inmate Inquiry System. There are people that live for these mugshots. And their lives will once again be complete.
Back on June 17, new bookings stopped showing up on the website. Slowly, the site’s searches like “Inmates booked in the past 72 hours” brought back fewer results … until they brought back none.
According to an official from the BCDC, the system went down after an update from the software vendor. “It’s an IT issue,” The Island News was told.
But here’s the problem. Since the Inmate Inquiry System was so convenient and effective, until it was gone, no one, not even us, had noticed that the Beaufort County Detention Center did not have a jail log.
And that’s not good.
Sure, no one can look up the mugshots of the people arrested at the Water Festival, but a more basic and important question should have been, “Who’s in the jail?”
In a county where citizens are at odds with the longtime sheriff over his plans to work with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), a group that currently has a habit of nabbing people and not really letting anyone know where they are, “Who’s in the jail?” is a legitimate question.
And it’s public information. And not only is the county required to tell us, they are required to tell us anytime a member of the public (not just journalists) asks.
The standard, set forth in the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, Section 30-4-30, Part D, Section 3 (which I’ve pasted below) says the County must provide a physical log of who’s in jail or been in jail over the past three months … upon request.
SECTION 30-4-30.Right to inspect or copy public records; fees; notification as to public availability of records; presumption upon failure to give notice; records to be available when requestor appears in person.
(D) The following records of a public body must be made available for public inspection and copying during the hours of operations of the public body, unless the record is exempt pursuant to Section 30-4-40 or other state or federal laws, without the requestor being required to make a written request to inspect or copy the records when the requestor appears in person:
(3) documents identifying persons confined in a jail, detention center, or prison for the preceding three months.
Also, Part E also implies that even if the Inmate Inquiry System is functional, the County still must produce the physical documents upon request.
(E) A public body that places the records in a form that is both convenient and practical for use on a publicly available Internet website is deemed to be in compliance with the provisions of subsection (D), provided that the public body also shall produce documents pursuant to this section upon request.”
Upon visiting the Beaufort County Detention Center on Thursday, July 3, I was told upon asking that there was no physical jail log.
Uh …
In a Monday, July 7, phone message to Beaufort County Assistant County Administrator John Robinson, relayed through County Public Information Office Hannah Nichols, I informed him that the County was in violation of the S.C. Freedom of Information Act and needed to rectify the situation immediately.
The next day, Robinson, informed me by phone that there was a jail log that morning. Upon investigation, I found that initially, when asking to access the jail log, after 10 minutes of waiting, I was given a record of all the bookings from the previous 72 hours … 44 inmates, 34 pages (17 front and back).
This was progress, but the County still did not meet the standard – the current jail population and anyone who had been there in the past 90 days. I informed Robinson of this in an email.
“I am confident the Beaufort County Administration and the Beaufort County Detention Center will address the situation and come up with a common-sense solution,” I wrote.
In response, Robinson wrote, “Detention Center Staff has taken additional steps since your visit … Detention Center staff has created a daily intake logbook which contains a minimum of 3 months of records. This book will be updated daily. The book can be found clearly labeled in the public area of the Detention Center lobby and available for inspection during all lobby hours of operation.
“I thank you for your comments and helping us meet the required standard for transparency. Our Detention Center Staff are dedicated professionals who wish only to serve the public in full compliance with the law.”
And now, sitting on the right side of the Detention Center lobby on a small table is a large three-ring binder holding close to 1,000 pages (500 front and back) detailing all of the Beaufort County Detention Center’s 200-plus inmates and the others who have been booked in the past three months.
So the next time the mugshot site goes down, if you want to know who’s in the jail, for whatever reason, you can check the log.
It doesn’t seem like a big deal. But it’s the public’s right to know.
And trust me on this, if you don’t fight for your rights, you will lose them.
Mike McCombs is the Editor of The Island News and can be reached at TheIslandNews@gmail.com.
