PORT HADLOCK — Jefferson County is denying complaints of substandard jail conditions alleged in a lawsuit filed in February by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Lawyers for the county filed an 11-page response Tuesday to the lawsuit that called conditions at the Jefferson County jail “so far below acceptable standards as to constitute cruel and unusual punishment”.
Court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Tacoma by the Seattle-based law firm Carney Badley Spellman denied the 32 allegations detailed in the lawsuit.
The ACLU maintains that health care employees have not been made adequately available to inmates at the jail, that inmates have been denied basic necessities such as running water, working showers and toilets, and that they have been deprived of medication and reading materials, among other issues.
“All acts of defendants were undertaken with the reasonable belief that the same were in accordance with the Constitution and the laws of the state of Washington,” attorney David Silke wrote in the response.
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