The Marion County Jail serves as the detention facility for the county, the City of Indianapolis, and the cities of Beech Grove, Lawrence, Southport, and Speedway, Indiana -a total population of approximately 800,000. The four-story jail, completed in 1965, had an official capacity of 776. Built with security and control as the primary concerns, it was, according to one observer, obsolete before it opened. Just a few years after the jail opened, it was the subject of a lawsuit that was not fully settled until a new ... wing was completed.... Briefly, the events and charges are as follows: In September 1972, a suit was filed by the Legal Services Organization (LSO) on behalf of pretrial detainees at the Marion County Jail, Named as defendants in the suit were the sheriff of the county, the jail commander, the commissioner of the State of Indiana Department of Corrections, the mayor of Indianapolis, and specific members of the Board of County Commissioners. The complaint, brought under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act (42 U.S.C. 1983), alleged violations of the pretrial detainees'' rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments to U.S. Constitution. At issue were overcrowding; [poor] physical and sanitary conditions; failure to classify prisoners for housing assignments, inadequate medical and dental care; and lack of recreation, of contact visits, and of access to telephone and mail services. Because of crowding, detainees were sometimes required to sleep on the floor in the shower rooms. Although mattresses were provided, mattress covers often were not. Jail issue clothing consisted of dresses for females and trousers for males. The prisoners wore the underwear they had on when admitted. Although they could purchase more underwear, as well as towels and pillows, or receive them from a visitor, indigent prisoners often had to do without. No provision was made to launder clothing or towels. Though these could be washed in cell-block basins, it was against regulations to hang them up to dry. All detainees could purchase postage and writing materials. They were allowed to mail only one letter per day containing no more than one piece of paper. Jail officials read all correspondence to and from family and friends. Telephone calls were not permitted except by special arrangement. There was no recreation program or exercise area. Playing cards could be purchased, and there was a meager library. Detainees could exercise only in the open area of the cell block. No televisions or radios were available. There was no regular dental program, no provision for medical examinations, no law library. Visits were "closed": The detainee visited from inside the cell block looking through a small plexiglass window and talking through a metal grating. Only two visitors were allowed per week. Children were never permitted. In 1975, a consent decree and partial judgment corrected many of the physical and sanitary problems. New jail rules were formulated and submitted to the court. These covered the sanitizing of mattresses, issuance of jail clothing and provisions for laundering them, improvements in medical and dental care, counseling services, and more liberal correspondence rules. However, many of these were "paper" changes only. Defendants'' official response was the appointment of a steering committee, with representatives of the mayor, the county commissioners, and the sheriff as members, to select consultants who would propose solutions. The contract to the consultants was let by the Department of Metropolitan Development, an arm of city government attached to the mayor''s office. The consultants'' report was submitted fourteen months later in June 1977. In January and February 1978, the mayor''s office and the sheriffs office submitted memoranda based on the report to the court advocating certain of the compliance options that particularly addressed the problem of overcrowding. These memoranda were followed by the plaintiffs'' memorandum in opposition to some of the proposed solutions. In August 1978, interrogatories to the sheriff were propounded by attorneys for the plaintiffs and were answered in the required thirty days by the sheriff. There were eighty-seven questions, and it was clear from the responses that no major concerted effort had been made to implement the judgment of the court. Neither the 1977 nor the 1978 sheriff''s budgets had allocated funds for compliance, nor had the sheriff requested special funds. Whatever improvements had been made had come from the jail''s normal operating budget. The 1979 budget request included $12 million for an addition to the jail, but it was denied by the county commissioners.