The Shame of Seattle's City Jail
A grand jury investigation into Seattle’s penal system reveals a crumbling facility plagued by filth, corruption, and the disappearance of evidence.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
On the subject of the city jail, the grand jury report states the structure is a disgrace to the city and county. We have found evidence against present management, including the total lack of proper sanitation and the wretched condition of the cells, and we will not cease on the subject until the guilty are punished and this public crime is made obvious. The sheriff is said to be utilizing the jail to bring and settle their own private grievances, and they have declared the recent trial of the jailer to be 'fake and without merit.' It is further noted that when evidence was supposedly found in the safe of a Chinese merchant, the grand jury states that valuable information was obtained from the arrestee, but as to where that evidence has now disappeared, and why the prisoner should have been released, that is 'only a matter of conjecture.'
“The structure is a disgrace to the city and county.”
In 1887, Seattle's jail was decried as a 'disgrace' due to corruption and neglect. Today, the debate over Seattle's incarceration infrastructure persists, shifting from calls for basic sanitation and oversight to modern debates about the functionality and ethics of the King County correctional system.
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