Al Cannon Detention Center Earns International Accreditation

Charleston County's jail, the Al Cannon Detention Center, recently joined an exclusive group of jail facilities across the country that have been accredited by the American Correctional Association.

During a press conference Tuesday to announce the achievement Sheriff Al Cannon praised the more than 400 Detention Center employees for making it happen.

"Make no mistake that this is in fact an accomplishment of the staff at the Detention Center," Cannon said.

He added that the County Council's decision to move forward with expanding the Detention Center to deal with overcrowding several years ago was also a major factor in making the accreditation possible.

"Now, for low those many years that we were overcrowded, I think one of the problems that County Council I think wrestled with was the fact that as I'm telling them that we're in a crisis situation the staff was doing such a good job that they did not see the kind of incidents that they would have expected to see in a crisis situation," Cannon said. "And so in a sense we were almost our own worst enemies because of the job that the staff at the Detention Center was doing. They have historically done a magnificent job."

The Al Cannon Detention Center is one of only 135 correctional facilities that has earned the ACA accreditation, there are more than 3,300 correctional facilities in the United States. Some facilities in Canada and one in Mexico have also earned the accreditation.

ACA accreditation includes a professional peer review process based on national and international standards developed since the group's founding in 1870. The standards were developed with input by national leaders in the corrections, law, architecture and health care fields as well as other groups interested in sound correctional management.

Charleston County Administrator Kirk Taylor said the accreditation will help lower the costs of running the jail facility because it is using national standards.

The Accreditation comes up for renewal every three years, and in order to keep it, the Detention Center will have to show it has followed the mandatory accreditation standards each of those three years.

"This is now our (standard operating procedure)," Assistant Sheriff Mitch Lucas said.

Earning the accreditation was a 5-year process that involved more than 400 staff members at the Detention Center, officials said.