This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project – Cleveland, a nonprofit news team covering Ohio’s criminal justice systems. Sign up for their Cleveland newsletter and Facebook Group, and follow The Marshall Project on Instagram, Reddit and YouTube.
Poor sanitation in jails has been the subject of civil rights lawsuits for decades. Plumbing issues, vermin infestations, feces-covered walls, and limited access to basic hygiene products, such as soap or tampons, are common complaints.
Courts almost universally agree that a lack of basic sanitation violates detainees’ constitutional rights, said David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. Pre-trial detainees have sued, arguing that filthy conditions violate their due process rights. If a person has already been convicted, allegations of foul living conditions are considered cruel and unusual punishment.
Despite widespread legal challenges, many jails across the country are still filthy. Litigation against substandard conditions often ends in a settlement, Fathi noted, with officials agreeing to a change in policy, or better monitoring and enforcement, in exchange for not taking the case to trial. Settlements are typically the fastest route to clean things up, but they don’t set a legal precedent for other facilities, meaning there’s nothing requiring jails in the same county or state to adopt reforms.
Good hygiene in jail is often about more than detainees’ willingness to keep clean. Understaffing, overcrowding, facility maintenance, and mental health issues can all play a role. For example, the ACLU of Oregon, settled a lawsuit in 2019 against a county jail that had allegedly crowded a dozen women into a single intake cell, where they had to beg for toilet paper and menstrual products, and were denied showers.
“People don’t want to live in filth,” said Dr. Fred Rottnek, director of community medicine at St. Louis University and former medical lead at the St. Louis County Jail. “They are at the mercy of the administration to provide needed services because they can’t do it on their own.”
Reporters from The Marshall Project’s local news teams dug into the state of sanitation at jails in St. Louis, Cleveland and Hinds County, Mississippi, home to Jackson, the state capitol. They found that poor jail maintenance and management, as well as understaffing, mean many detainees are left to live in unsanitary conditions.
Cuyahoga County, Ohio
The Cuyahoga County Jail doesn’t have enough showers. The jail has been cited by the Ohio Bureau of Adult Detention year after year for not meeting the state’s standard of one shower for every dozen beds.
From June 2024 to June 2025, there were 334 work orders placed for malfunctioning or unusable showers, with complaints ranging from clogged drains and no water, to black mold in the shower with a leaking ceiling, according to records obtained by The Marshall Project.
Even if the jail cleared the backlog, it would still fall short of its requirement because some of its cells are holding two people, which exceeds the state’s ratio, Jennifer Ciaccia, press secretary for the Cuyahoga County Department of Communications, wrote in an email. Aging infrastructure exacerbates the strain on the jail’s plumbing system, Ciaccia added, leading to “frequent malfunctions.”
Detainees — some of whom can spend months awaiting trial — are responsible for cleaning the showers and other parts of the facility. But there is no set cleaning schedule, Ciaccia noted. Corrections officers are tasked with ensuring that the housing units are cleaned daily, and that showers are powerwashed “regularly.” Officers are required to provide residents with cleaning supplies, including solutions, mops, brooms, scrub pads, and toilet brushes.
Despite the mandate, detainees consistently complain of filthy conditions, including scratches and dirt on surfaces, disgusting sinks, and toilets caked in body fluids and grime. Staying clean is hard, they said, because the water pressure is so weak you can’t wash your hands. One detainee said he had to use the same spoon for every meal, cleaning it in the sink attached to his toilet. In August, Tianetta Carter spent several days in jail after being arrested for a domestic violence charge. She refused to shower, she said, because the stalls were filthy. The toilets were so dirty, she asked for menstrual pads from a corrections officer so she could clean them first. Every time she went to the bathroom, she said she had to ask a corrections officer for toilet paper, and she was held in a cell where the toilet was backed up for hours.
“No matter how much they clean it, it’s still bad,” she said. “It’s so bad.”
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