After a week of inspections and meetings, the American Correctional Association gave the Marion County Regional Correctional Facility top marks during its accreditation visit.
Inspectors said only about one in 10 facilities get 100 percent compliance on 401 applicable standards.
“It means a lot to our facility,” Warden Derek Mingo said Wednesday as the three-member team presented its findings.
The county-owned and managed facility in Columbia houses more than 200 state inmates. It’s separate from the county jail.
Team leader John Sargent said he found the facility well prepared for the visit, with the staff knowledgeable and the inmates “very restful.”
Sargent said the audit process is intensive, with the three members working to assure standards are met in dozens of areas.
“There are 62 mandatory standards in the file,” he said. “You must be in compliance with all of the standards that are applicable. In the case here, there were 51 standards that had to be met. The Marion County Regional Correctional Facility was in compliance with 100 percent of the standards. As we worked deeper in the compliance, there were 401 standards directly applicable and I’m proud to say 401 were in compliance – 100 percent compliance. It’s only about one in every 10 audits that can say that.”
Sargent said the team’s report would be submitted to the ACA for evaluation. The commission meets next January in New Orleans, and the warden will go in front of a panel to answer any questions.
Accreditation team member Mary Worrell evaluated medical standards.
“The facility is very clean. The staff is outstanding and the inmates were very respectful,” she said. “The hospitality was great. It was a very nice audit.”
Evaluator Julie Salmi echoed the other team members’ findings.
“I have not been to a facility this clean or this well organized for a while,” she said. “The food was quite good.”
Sargent said the team spoke to nearly 100 inmates at the state facility and didn’t hear any negative complaints.
“That’s unheard of,” he said. “They did a great job, and we’re very pleased.”
Mingo thanked his staff and the Marion County Sheriff’s Office for the efforts to improve the prison. He also thanked the ACA team for their professionalism.
“It’s inevitable that this process will make us a better facility,” he said. “I want to take this opportunity to thank the Board of Supervisors for their support, the sheriff and the chief deputy for their great support. I also want to give my staff a hand; we have the greatest staff in the world. I want to also thank the ACA auditors for their input and everything they have shared with us.”
Sheriff Berkley Hall met Thursday morning with members of the accreditation team and learned the results of the evaluation of the Marion County Jail.
“They scored us at a 99.9 percent,” he said. “The only thing they deducted for is something we have no control over. It is the amount of light that comes in from skylights in the facility.”
He said Marion County is one of the few programs that has both the county jail and state side accredited and thanked both staffs.
“This doesn’t just happen every three years,” he said. “They worked every day to ensure these standards. Kudos to all the staff for their efforts. I’m proud of the scores we got and this is solely the credit of our employees. We had a warden, deputy warden, chief of security and others who have been here for many years. It pays to have employees like that and keep them.”
Pictured Above: Warden Derek Mingo of the Marion County Regional Correctional Facility shakes hands with John Sargent of the American Correctional Association Wednesday following an announcement about the prison’s good performance in an audit. | Photo by Mark Rogers
