33 officer arrests in 3 years: Sheriff asks 'What are we doing wrong?'

Richard Roundtree, the sheriff of Richmond County, Georgia, has a problem: More than 30 of his sworn officers have been arrested over the past three years, mostly on charges of smuggling drugs or items into the county jail or assaulting inmates.

“We ask ourselves, ‘What are we doing wrong? What more can we be doing?’” Roundtree said in June after announcing the arrest of a jailer on charges that he passed synthetic marijuana to a detainee.

In some ways, the crisis in Richmond County reflects a dilemma facing many of America’s county jails, where people accused of crimes are held before trial or serve short sentences. Across the country, jails are overcrowded and understaffed, experts, inmates and workers say, making conditions worse for both detainees and guards. The arrests in Richmond County may be a result of those factors, although Roundtree has said that he’s still trying to figure out why there have been so many officers charged with crimes — and how to curb the misconduct.