Alachua County Sheriff’s Office Department of the Jail: A Cultural Assessment

In February 2005, the criminal justice consulting firm of Pulitzer/Bogard & Associates (P/BA) was retained by the Alachua Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) to conduct a cultural assessment of the Alachua County Jail (Department of the Jail or DOJ), which is operated by the Office of the Sheriff under an interlocal agreement with the BOCC. The decision to proceed with the assessment of the Jail came some 20 months after a June 2003 incident in which a 19-year-old University of Florida student alleged that he was sexually assaulted at the Jail by an inmate named Randolph Jackson. Questions about the incident and tension on the part of DOJ employees surrounding the employee discipline that followed (along with other staffing issues) prompted calls on the part of the Commissioners to know more about the extent to which this incident and the tensions were reflective of deeper issues within the Agency. The task with this cultural assessment was to get to know this organization in-depth, to assess the appropriateness and professionalism of the formal culture (as expressed in written policies and procedures and the training program), and to evaluate the degree to which there is alignment between its formal culture and its subcultures (the underlying beliefs of the staff and the way the formal policies are implemented in practice).