CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain said improvements he's ordered to the county jail since starting to spend some nights in a jail cell have resulted in better detainee behavior.
Sheriff Hain first spent an overnight in a jail cell in January and has done it twice more since then.
And, what he has learned from inmates and firsthand experience, has prompted him to do everything from ordering new, more comfortable mattresses to providing a chicken, rather than soy-based menu and providing tablets to inmates on good behavior.
Sheriff Hain said, "the first night I slept in there, I slept on the standard mattress that we had at the time which I noticed was very thin, looked very worn and it had holes in it.
So, he said, he had one of his aides order new mattresses for all the jail cells.
"It’s still a jail. It’s not like sleeping on your Sealy at home but, yes, they are more comfortable," the sheriff said.
In the meal arena, Sheriff Hain said breakfast offerings had been a major complaint so those were revamped.
He also ordered 500 tablets on which detainees can do GED work or focus on lessons from the jail's jobs programs.
And the bottom line, the sheriff said, is improved conditions have translated into better detainee behavior.
"With the new implementations between the tablets, the comfort and the food, we have seen attacks on officers go down to zero. We’ve seen inmate complaints dramatically reduced," he said.
"Where I would receive four or five reports a day, most days I get zero reports so, we may be in a honeymoon phase right now, but at least we have provided an environment today that is supportive to our detainees."
Sheriff Hain said it’s all done in the hope of returning the detainees to the community in a productive fashion, especially since a sizable majority of the detainees arrive at the jail with some sort of addiction issue.
Toward that end he said, "we now have live medically-assisted treatment care in the facility and group addiction counseling which is huge when you talk about layover and recidivism."
When Hain took office last fall, he said there were 513 detainees. As of Monday night, there were 470.