Editing Escambia County, Florida (section)

==Government==
Escambia County government is led by a five-member Board of County Commissioners. Each is elected from a [[single-member district]]. The county commission appoints a professional county administrator as chief administrative officer of the county.

The chief law enforcement authority of Escambia County is the [[Escambia County Sheriff's Office]], also an elective office. The sheriff of Escambia County is Chip Simmons, elected in 2020.

The fire protection arm of the Escambia County is the Escambia County Fire Rescue (Florida).

===Board of County Commissioners===
Escambia County is divided into five districts. One county commissioner is elected from each district to serve a four-year term. Commissioners are chosen in partisan elections by voters from the districts in which they live. The board appoints a county administrator to be chief administrative officer of the county, responsible to the commission for the orderly operations of matters within the board's jurisdiction. The current office holders are,

* Escambia County District 1: Steve Stroberger
* Escambia County District 2: Mike Kohler (chair)
* Escambia County District 3: Lumon May 
* Escambia County District 4: Ashlee Hofberger
* Escambia County District 5: Steven Barry 
* Escambia County administrator: Wes Moreno
* Escambia County assistant administrator: Debbie Bowers
* Escambia County assistant administrator: Wesley Hall
* Escambia County attorney: Alison P. Rogers

<ref>{{Cite web |title=Your Government |url=https://myescambia.com/your-government |access-date=2025-02-10 |website=MyEscambia.com |language=en}}</ref>

===County jail===
In 2011, the [[United States Department of Justice|US Justice Department]]’s [[Civil Rights Division]] issued a letter detailing the results of its investigation into conditions at Escambia County Jail, which houses roughly 1,300 prisoners. The department found that, although Sheriff David Morgan had recently implemented a series of reforms, conditions at the jail still routinely violated prisoners' constitutional rights.<ref name="doj-2013">{{cite web |author=Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs |date=May 22, 2013 |title=Justice Department Finds Unconstitutional Conditions of Confinement at Escambia County, Fla. Jail |url=https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/May/13-crt-590.html |publisher=United States Department of Justice}}</ref>

Specifically, the department concluded that known systemic deficiencies, stemming mainly from staffing shortages, subjected prisoners to excessive risk of assault by other prisoners and to inadequate mental health care. Additionally, the department found that, until recently, the jail had an informal policy and practice of segregating its housing units, reserving one for African-American prisoners. According to the Department of Justice, this race-based segregation stigmatized and discriminated against many of the prisoners, and aggravated racial tensions in the jail.<ref name="doj-2013" /> Between April 2012 and March 2013, the prison recorded 176 inmate-on-inmate assaults, including 20 serious head wounds.<ref name="austin-2013">{{cite web |author=Roy L. Austin Jr. |date=May 22, 2013 |title=Findings Letter of Investigation of Escambia County Jail |url=https://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/7492013522113545964446.pdf}}</ref>

The investigation released a letter of findings:
* Prisoner-on-prisoner assaults are a common occurrence at the jail, making the Facility unsafe for prisoners. Assaults occur routinely primarily because of a shortage of correctional staff. The facility needs more staff to patrol jail pods, intervene when altercations or fights break out, and search cells for dangerous items that could be used as weapons against fellow prisoners;<ref name="austin-2013" />
* A staffing study released in March 2011 commissioned by county leadership has given Jail leadership good reason to know that staffing shortages pose a significant risk to prisoner safety. Among other findings, the study concluded that: the jail "is operating with only about three-fourths of its needed staff; that "the [j]ail has been understaffed for many years;" that "[d]eputies ... are routinely borrowed from other jobs which results in leaving their posts unmanned;" that "[t]he frequency of some important operations, such as cell searches, is reduced due to lack of staff to conduct the searches;" that "[p]osts are understaffed or not staffed at all;" and that, "[l]arge insufficiencies in jail staffing ... raise the likelihood that something serious could happen that would overwhelm the jail's ability to respond;"<ref name="austin-2013" />
* The Jail's leadership fails to appropriately monitor and track prisoner-on-prisoner violence and staff-on-prisoner uses of force;<ref name="austin-2013" />
* The jail's decades-long practice of housing some prisoners in housing units designated as only for black prisoners ("black-only pods") racially discriminates against African-Americans, contributes to prisoner perceptions that the jail favors white prisoners over black prisoners, and reduces safety by exacerbating racial tensions among prisoners at the Facility;<ref name="austin-2013" />
* Prisoners are not given timely and adequate access to appropriately skilled mental health care professionals;<ref name="austin-2013" />
* The jail routinely fails to provide appropriate medications to prisoners with mental illness;<ref name="austin-2013" />
* The jail provides inadequate housing and observation for prisoners with serious mental illness and/or at risk of self-injury, including suicide;<ref name="austin-2013" /> and
* On average, the jail sends roughly one prisoner per month to the hospital after an incident of self-injury, a rate judged indicative of an inadequate mental health program.<ref name="austin-2013" />

The Department of Justice concluded from these facts that Escambia County Jail's practices violated the [[Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution|fourteenth amendment]]'s [[due process]] protections for pre-trial detainees, as well as the [[Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution|eighth amendment]]'s protections for those convicted of a criminal offense. Jail officials must refrain from showing deliberate indifference to conditions of confinement posing an excessive risk of harm to prisoners.<ref name="austin-2013" />

Roy L. Austin Jr., deputy assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division, commended Sheriff Morgan for his willingness to remedy problems identified during the course of the investigation. The department conducted this investigation under the [[Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act]] (CRIPA) to enforce constitutional mandates. The department's investigation was broad-based.<ref name="doj-2013" />

The investigation was conducted by Special Litigation Counsel Avner Shapiro and Senior Trial Attorney David Deutsch of the Civil Rights Division's Special Litigation Section.<ref name="doj-2013" /> The findings letter is available on the department's website.