The Shame of the King County Jail
A scathing report from a grand jury reveals a 'standing disgrace' where prisoners are packed into windowless cells and the county government operates in squalid, cramped quarters.
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.
The condition of the county jail is shamefully inadequate; the jail is old, small, and unwholesome. It is a place unfit for the confinement of human beings, and its continued use is a standing shame and disgrace to the wealthy county of King. The jail was built as a temporary structure and situated in a natural hollow below street grade. It has 10 cells, each 6 by 8 feet in size and less than 7 feet high, meant for 10 prisoners. Yet, on the first of February, the county had 110 persons in custody. Two men are assigned to each cell, and others sleep in the corridors. The drainage is wretched; in each corridor is a water closet, and the stench arising from these sinks permeates the whole jail. The jail is entirely insecure and unsafe, and it is only by constant vigilance on the part of the sheriff that prisoners are kept within the walls. During the past year, over 700 persons have been temporarily confined in the jail, and from these, they have been given precisely the same treatment as those hardened criminals. Persons detained as witnesses and persons suspected of crimes of which they are afterward proven innocent are all made to taste the bitterness of this place.
“The jail is a crying evil that smells loud to heaven.”
This 1889 report on the 'shameful' state of the King County jail captures the same fundamental tension Seattle faces today: the systemic failure of the justice system to provide basic humane conditions for those in custody, alongside a chronic lack of adequate public facilities to support a rapidly growing population.
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