LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The President of the Louisville Metro Council reacted to a new, detailed report on the Louisville Department of Metro Corrections discussed Wednesday night during a Metro Council meeting.

What You Need To Know

  • David Beyer, a former FBI Agent, was hired by the Louisville Metro Council to do an assessment of the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections. 

  • Since Nov. 2021, 13 deaths have happened inside LMDC, causing an outcry from local advocacy organizations

  •  Beyer's report found inadequate staffing and failure to adhere to basic security protocol among other problems

  • With the report, Metro Council hopes to create an updated design for the facility where inmates could be supervised more directly

That report gets into specific details of problems inside LMDC, including the thirteen deaths inside LMDC since Nov. 2021, inadequate staffing, a failure to adhere to basic security protocol and prior leadership shortcomings.

Those are just a few of the many things former FBI agent David Beyer found in his report that Louisville’s Metro Council hired him to do.

Markus Winkler, Metro Council President, said the report shows some glaring deficiencies in the department.

“I think there’s probably 2 big takeaways,” Winkler explained. “One, we had already heard from the interim report really relating to the lack of proper management processes under the prior administration.”

“Then, I think the second takeaway really relates to the inadequacy of the facility in terms of providing a safe place for inmates to be, a safe place for our staff to work and the kind of place where our officers feel [like] valued members of the team,” he added.

Beyer said the incidents did not have to happen.

 “I truly believe that most of these incidents could have been prevented had we had a better jail. One that’s called a direct supervision model. Many instances where what transpired could have been observed by corrections officers in a direct supervision model,” Beyer said.

“The piece that he’s really talking about, which the model has to do with how the facility is laid out. When you look at our jail, it’s designed like an office building,” Winkler said. “There are control rooms and there are individual cells that have walls, and you don’t have a lot of direct lines-of-sight from control areas to the rooms.” Winkler explained that modern jail designs use a design where an officer can monitor multiple cells from a single elevated pod.

He called Louisville’s jail “antiquated” and “run down.”

“It’s not healthy for our inmates, it’s not helpful for employees. That impacts recruiting, that impacts retention,” Beyer explained during Wednesday’s meeting.

“I think when you look at what could a modern jail facility look like, you can have a focus on mental health. You can have a focus on substance abuse. And you can have a jail that is safe for the people who are there and for the officers who work there and treat people humanely,” Winkler noted.

Beyer hopes to have his full, 300-page report wrapped up in about a week.

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