If you haven’t been a “guest” of the Sequoyah County Jail, you should not only consider yourself fortunate, but you may have an unrealistic impression of what a jail is like. Or, at least, what Jail Administrator Jeremy Day would like it to be.

To be sure, Day is doing his best to improve the jail — the public perception as well as the actual facilities.

“Jeremy is really trying to step up the importance of it and trying to show that the jail is not the armpit of the county,” Sequoyah County Undersheriff Charles House told the county commissioners at their weekly meeting on Monday. “He wears me and Larry [Sheriff Lane] down sometimes because his brain’s running, thinking of ideas of how to improve the jail and trying to modernize it and trying to make it the best it can be.”

But while the sheriff ’s office is trying to improve the jail’s image, there are plenty of obstacles that make the job even harder. One of the biggest challenges is inmates with mental health issues. Add to that jail personnel who are not trained or qualified to deal with such issues. And then there’s the mental health professionals who are already overwhelmed and unable to provide help to correctional facilities that are attempting to deal with inmates that are a danger to themselves as well as to others.

“Do we see a light at the end of the tunnel with this mental health, outside of it being a train that’s gonna run smack dab over us?” District 3 Commissioner Jim Rogers asked House.

“Pretty much what we’ve learned, it’s case by case, and you’ve just gotta try to manage the best you can, because there’s no light,” House said. “Weekly we get new clientele in our jail that, as we know, there’s something going on [associated with mental health]. You’ll get one that, for three weeks straight, is so far out there, whether they’re stripping down completely with nothing on, to rubbing their feces, to yelling, to screaming, to just dancing. In the past, you might see that for a 24-hour period ’til they come down. You may see it now for three weeks straight, and you can’t put somebody in a cell with them.

“We have five cells that usually hold four people. Right now, they’re holding one person because of mental health issues. So that takes away 16 people that we should be holding here,” House explained.

“When an inmate is supposed to be in a facility such as Vinita, since there’s no beds [there], they’ve come up with a new program that they will send people here and treat them while they’re in your custody. We’re working on trying to recapture some of that cost, because once the judge has said you’re to be in Vinita, they should be paying for that housing of that inmate,” the undersheriff said.

“Now the bad thing is it may come back to haunt us because they say, ‘No, we’re not paying. We just won’t send anybody, and you’re gonna wait there.’ So it’s a Catch 22. There’s no physical bed there, so there’s nothing we can do about that. If we push too hard, they may just say, ‘Well, we’re not coming to do it, you can just hold them until a bed becomes available.’ So we’re trying to balance that.”

House told Rogers that no one at the jail is trained in mental health, but because of the increased need, foresees mental health training becoming a standard for jail and law enforcement personnel, which will further tax county finances.

“So where’s some of our money for mental health?” Rogers asked, almost rhetorically, since mental health has been a frequent topic at county commissioners meetings. “Why aren’t we getting any money for dealing with mental health? Are agencies the only ones getting this when we’re doing their job?”

“The problem is they’re in our jail for criminal charges,” House explained. “And if they have criminal charges on them, CREOKS [Behavioral Health Services] and places like that will not take them, they don’t have that facility. The only facility, as we know, is Vinita. So they’re not equipped with housing to handle these types of people. We’re not equipped with the right personnel to handle these type of people. But since they have criminal charges, of course …” and Rogers finishes his sentence, “… they’re just dropped in our lap.”

But ignoring such offenders is not an option.

“When they act in the way that they’re acting and they’re committing the crimes they’re committing, you have to take them for the safety of the public,” House said.

“I don’t have an issue with that,” Rogers responded. “My issue is the fact that we don’t have anybody [qualified to deal with mental health issues] and we’re not being compensated to hire somebody that’s trained to deal with it. With all the lawsuits that the jails face across this state, and you guys have heard me say this time and time again, when they can’t dump it in anybody else’s lap, it lands in county government’s [lap]. That’s how things work, it gets dumped in our lap.”

Micki Kimble, one of 18 people who attended Monday’s meeting, interjected in an attempt to not only empathize, but further explain why inmates with mental health problems pose a unique dilemma.

“The problem is that they don’t have anybody over them to oversee them. They’re their own person,” said Kimble, who is special projects coordinator for Sallisaw NOW Coalition, which deals with substance misuse, and strives to reduce the abuse of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and prescription drugs. “You can’t make them take their medication, and that’s the problem. They get off their medicine and ….”

“That’s the point I’m trying to make,” Rogers interrupted. “Our jailers are not trained and qualified to deal with mental health. This is dumped in our lap and ‘you handle it,’ monetarily and every other way.”

“The family’s given up on them, so there’s no family help,” House noted, concluding discussion of the problem with no immediate resolution. “They’ve been crying out for help for years. It’s just a bad situation, and what we’re living in.”