Earlier this month, Nashville criminal justice officials received a regular email outlining the daily population of the city’s jail facilities. It showed that, with the exception of the mental health-focused Behavioral Care Center, every one of them was overcrowded.
This was not a surprise. As a whole, the jail system run by the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office has been holding more people than it’s supposed to since the beginning of this year. At some facilities the problem goes back even further. The most recent data from Metro’s Criminal Justice Planning department shows the Correctional Development Center for men — a jail on Harding Place designed to hold 768 people — has been over capacity every day since May 25, 2024. That facility failed a state inspection earlier this year. Two others — the Correctional Development Center for women and the Maximum Correctional Center, which contains people awaiting trial along with some serving one-to-six-year felony sentences — have been over capacity for at least five months.
It’s a situation that calls to mind the 1987 class action lawsuit that led to the Metro government conceding in court that its overcrowded jails were unconstitutional. And Metro Public Defender Martesha Johnson said she believes it has already contributed to violence, including an alleged assault in June that led to the death of one of her clients…