Wake County Sheriff Willie Rowe said he has asked local law enforcement agencies to use discretion when deciding whom to bring to jail because of capacity concerns.
“We’ve talked with the chiefs and everyone’s on the same page,” Rowe said. “We understand if a person is suspected or alleged to commit a non-violent crime, one that does not warrant arrest, that they’ll continue to utilize their options, whether citation or how they handle it.”
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The combined capacity of Wake County’s two jails is 1,574. The average inmate population reached a yearly high of 1,778 in July, and Rowe said there are days when the number is even higher.
“We were budgeted to house about 1,600,” Rowe said. “Now, suddenly, our population has popped up to, you know, 1,800 to 1,900.”
The overcrowding is resulting in deplorable conditions, according to families of inmates and people who have spent time in the jail recently.
“It stinks real bad,” JP Priester said. “There were guys there for five or six days who hadn’t showered. If you got a weak stomach, that ain’t for you. Just know, you are going to vomit. I would rather smell cow manure than smell what was going on in there.”
Priester turned himself in last month after failing to appear in court on 2025 traffic charges, including reckless driving, speeding, driving without a license and expired tags. The charges ultimately resulted in a $200 fine.
“I had to get the charge handled but if I had known I was going to be treated like that, I probably would have waited until it died down,” Priester said. “It was crazy. No shower, no nothing. It was funky, bad, bad. It was real bad.”
He said the floors and walls were filthy and that he didn’t sit down during the two days he was there. He said holding cells were shoulder to shoulder, with more than a dozen inmates in some and more than two dozen in others, by his estimate.
“You can’t sit down anywhere,” Priester said. “You can’t walk in the cell without stepping on somebody. You have people laying down in the cell and people laying by the toilets. They don’t sweep or mop it out.”
A source provided WRAL with a photo from surveillance cameras inside the jail. It shows numerous people sitting outside actual cells and one person lying on the floor.
Rowe said that is an accurate depiction of what his deputies are dealing with right now.
Asked whether he believes the conditions are acceptable, Rowe said, “Well, you’ve got to determine why the person’s on the floor. We have sufficient seating. We have places for them to lie. We brought in portable beds and some people choose to lay on the floor. We’re trying to keep everybody comfortable and peaceful there.”
Rowe said the jails continue to provide three meals a day and hygiene opportunities as best they can.
The number of inmates coming into the jails continues to climb, due in large part to Iryna’s Law, according to Rowe.
Wake County Sheriff’s Office data shows that on Dec. 1, 2025, the day Iryna’s Law took effect, 198 people were being held without bond as required by the law. As of August, that number jumped to 533 individuals being held in custody without bond. WCSO also provided overall average inmate totals by month and for the previous five years.
Between 2021 and 2025, the average jail population increased 27.2%, from 1,198 to 1,524.
There hasn’t been a single month this year in which the average population was below last year’s five-year high.
Rowe said that while he supports Iryna’s Law, the resulting influx of inmates could have been better planned for.“If we had this conversation ahead of the passing of the law, maybe if it was implemented July 1 when the new budget came in and the commissioners and county government could have had more time to put resources in place, but it is what it is,” Rowe said. “We’re dealing with it.”As inmate numbers continue to climb, Rowe said relief is on the way. About 240 additional beds are expected to become available by the beginning of the year, and a jail renovation is eventually expected to increase capacity to roughly 2,400.But it could take another year or two before that additional capacity is fully available. In the meantime, Rowe said crime doesn’t take a day off, inmates will continue coming in and deputies cannot turn them away.“We can’t close our door,” Rowe said. “Those options, we don’t have. So we have to just find ways to make it work. We try to do more with less. Even before Iryna’s Law was passed, I’ve always took a stand that it’s better to have people incarcerated than on the street with others. If you don’t have everybody at the table at the beginning, you’re going to have a bottleneck and that’s what we’re experiencing right now.”