Inside and out, space is tight

For those who live around the Suffolk County Jail, there are few intrusions.

''One can actually see the prisoners play basketball," says Paul Schratter, a resident of Hawthorne Place, a few blocks from the jail.

''And you can hear them play basketball," rejoins Louise Thomas, an activist who works with Schratter on the West End Civic Association.

''I don't think it's the proper place for a prison right in the middle of the city," Thomas says. ''But, you know what? They don't bother us. I'm not afraid. I've never heard anyone say they're afraid because there's a jail there."

The challenge for Sheriff Andrea Cabral is to keep her city of 1,000, including inmates and staff, humming without creating any disturbance to the neighborhood. She must manage logistics that involve feeding, housing, transportation, parking for staff, waste disposal, and maintenance of a facility where the residents take little pride in the place.

''We're getting [arrivals] usually within 24 hours after they commit a crime," says Cabral. ''Many people are in active detox. They've not taken meds. For many people, it's just dawning on them what's going on. We see the widest panoply of human drama you can imagine." She praises her staff for keeping order out of ever-simmering chaos. ''If people could see the kind of job that corrections officers do," she says, citing the need alone to manage ''27,000 medical appointments."

''It's a constant, constant thing," says Cabral of the human churn at the Suffolk County Jail.

She says the institution has been stretched since the day it opened in February 1991. ''I'm told that at the time it was finished, people already knew it was too small."

Infrastructure has had to be replaced. ''There were significant problems that probably should have been attended to in the construction phase." The jail recently got a ''Muffin Monster," a sewage treatment apparatus that clears backed-up toilets and sinks in 453 cells. A new steam-powered heating and cooling system ''will save us $200,000 a year."

Yet among the toughest challenges facing Cabral is one nearly every Bostonian has grumbled about at one time or another: parking.

Parking might seem mundane considering all the other challenges of operating a lock-up in the middle of Boston, but the dearth of legal spaces, Cabral says, is ''an absolute nightmare for our employees."

The car crunch can also be a highly visible embarrassment when parked vehicles in front of the West End's law enforcement institution line up in illegal spaces along Nashua Street, or create obvious roadblocks on the narrow median strip in front of the jail. ''It's a problem," says Cabral. ''It's a problem that we face in Suffolk County that other facilities across this Commonwealth do not face."

The legal outdoor and underground parking lots attached to the jail cannot accommodate the vehicles for more than 300 employees and visitors.

''There are no parking lots," she says. ''When they built the jail, they made no accommodation for parking."

The sheriff has investigated leasing parking spaces from Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital across the street, but the prices are prohibitive. ''They want a huge amount of money for it, which we just don't have," she says. A parcel next to Spaulding owned by Massachusetts General Hospital is slated to be developed as a ''multi-modal" transportation center, but the Suffolk sheriff is unlikely to get a piece of it.

''I don't harbor any illusions about space and my ability to attain more of it," she says. ''I would absolutely love to get parking for my employees. I think people are probably paying huge amounts of money to park in garages or paying tickets. It's a challenge."

Many jail employees are forced to leave their cars in Cambridge and trek over the bridges to work. ''It's very difficult, particularly in the winter months," says Cabral.

She cautions against the assumption that any car illegally parked on busy Nashua Street belongs to scofflaws from the Suffolk County Jail: ''I don't think it's safe to assume that someone who's in a spot they shouldn't be in is a bad employee," she says. ''There are people who are working at Spaulding and people working on Causeway Street and walking down there, so it isn't just our folks."

Cabral has instituted an employee incentive program with underground parking spots the valued prizes.

''So there's an incentive to do well just to secure a parking spot," she says.

MONICA COLLINS