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The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office and Board of Supervisors provided the first public update last month on improvements to mental health services and overall conditions at the county jail that are required in the wake of a class action lawsuit and under new state legislation, following a decision not to move forward with a new mental health facility.
Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez joined the board’s regular meeting along with officials from Alameda County Behavioral Health and General Services Agency on Feb. 27 to provide a public update on capital improvement projects at Santa Rita Jail aimed at addressing behavioral health and substance abuse needs of the jail’s population in line with a consent decree agreed to in 2022 calling for change at the facility in the wake of the class action Babu lawsuit that was filed in 2018.
The class action lawsuit was on behalf of all people incarcerated in the jail that alleged inadequate mental health care and suicide prevention precautions at Santa Rita as well as a lack of out-of-cell time and access to programs and services for people with mental health challenges and use of force.
While the initial plan to address the requirements of the consent decree had been in the form of a new building aimed at addressing behavioral health and substance abuse needs among the jail’s population that would have been funded by a state grant secured in 2015, conversations shifted last year toward alternatives to the new facility amid criticism and protests from a number of community groups throughout the county calling for a different approach as the death toll at the jail continues to rise, with four deaths so far this year.
“Since taking office – it’s been a year now – there’s been a number of improvements that we’ve been making, but we are really here now working in partnership with our behavioral health GSA team on what this mental health building means for the individuals that are going to be receiving care,” Sanchez said on Feb. 6. “Through these discussions and through the evaluation process, we found that the design and the planning for this building to be placed on the Santa Rita Jail campus is not the most ideal, and it’s not something that I support anymore.”
Sanchez said that as an alternative to the facility, her office had instead been seeking to partner with existing services through the county’s General Services Agency and Behavioral Health Services in the community and reevaluate the needs of people incarcerated at Santa Rita with the goal of providing services and support within the jail’s existing facilities rather than within a new building.
“It’s been discussed through the inception of this consent decree that this mental health building was appropriate, but as we’ve navigated this consent degree and the needs within the facility we find that the way to deliver services through our behavioral health team is inside the living areas where they are housed,” Sanchez said. “Building a facility of this size and placing it where it is planned to have been placed would be a logistical nightmare really with staffing, and then moving individuals from one side of the jail to another, which I think will impact the number of people that will be able to have actual delivery of services,” she added.
Instead of the new facility, which had been set to be paid for by $54.3 million in state funds and $23.7 million in county funds, Sanchez said that evidence and evaluation by her department and other county stakeholders pointed instead toward providing additional services within the existing facility and bolstering partnerships and support for the county’s general and behavioral health services in order to address the requirements of the consent decree.
“We have been able to identify care coordination, outreach and engagement programs to date in partnership with behavioral health services,” Sanchez said. “We are examining how we can identify locations within our housing units in our facility to deliver care directly, and those are still in their preliminary plans – those are things we’re deciding right now in terms of which way to go forward.”
In addition to new care coordination, outreach, and engagement programs, the new efforts being put into place systemwide by Behavioral Health Services in lieu of the additional building include medication, pharmacy, and nursing services, school and community based wellness centers and outpatient services, crisis services and crisis stabilization units, acute and long-term psychiatric treatment, sobering centers, and behavioral health courts.
Meanwhile, Santa Rita is ushering on-site changes spearheaded by the county’s behavioral health department, including therapeutic housing units, early access and stabilization services, and a reentry and care coordination team to ensure continued services after people with mental health and social service needs are released from the jail.
The department is also bolstering reentry services in general with reentry coaches and peer groups and efforts to reduce parole and probation violations, as well as diversion programs aimed at keeping people out of the jail system including an arrest diversion and treatment center and a forensic peer respite space as alternatives to Santa Rita for people suffering mental health and substance abuse crises.
Other efforts include expanding support services for friends and loved ones of incarcerated people and helping them to navigate other sources of support throughout the county.
“We’re also looking at ways that we better support family members and better support clients who have not typically accepted our services within the community,” said Juan Taizan, director of forensic and reentry services for behavioral health. “One effort currently underway is our family navigation and support center to really help families if they have loved ones with mental health needs or in the justice system, helping them navigate the justice system, helping them navigate the behavioral health system.”
Connecting people with mental health needs to services outside of Santa Rita is also the goal of the state-mandated Care Court program that will be launched in December, Taizan said, as well as new residential treatment facilities including an eight-bed crisis treatment facility.
In addition to the requirements of the consent decree, Sanchez noted that updates to state law on corrections facilities mean more changes aimed at making circumstances for incarcerated people more humane, including a shift in language from “inmate” to “individual” while discussing members of the jail’s population and the use of general terminology, as well as tangible changes on the ground for people in the jail such as an increase in out-of-cell time from three hours in a seven-day period to 10 hours in a seven-day period, the elimination of “disciplinary diets” and opportunities for exercise, as well as an increase in suicide prevention services.
The jail has already seen the implementation of cell softening and security screening projects that were completed last year, with ADA renovations and additional security camera installations underway, as well as additional outdoor recreation and “quasi-yard” facilities and confidential interview rooms and workstations.
“We want to make sure that we address consent decree requirements but we don’t want to stop there,” Sanchez said. “That’s why we are taking additional steps to make sure that we are covering anything that we come across in the jail as far as a safety issue that we need to address.”
Sanchez and others noted that it would take more than just short-term solutions to fully update the jail though, with infrastructure projects underway and additional work needed to upgrade the aging infrastructure.
“It’s a 30-year-old building and infrastructure that operates 24/7, so that’s a significant amount of wear on any facility,” said Kimberly Gasaway, director of general services. “There are significant maintenance needs that are included in your capital plan.”
Gasaway also noted that the jail had been built on a now-outdated model for law enforcement and corrections that has changed in the present day.
“The facility is designed based on a previous concept of running detention,” Gasaway said. “It’s not the program that the office is now speaking of. It’s a focus on pre-trial detention rather than programs and rehabilitation.”
The situation has been evaluated in a full facility assessment of Santa Rita aimed at guiding and prioritizing short and long term plans for upgrades and changes to the site.
“The new sheriff was very responsive to our efforts to come into their space and essentially open the doors and let us look at every square inch of the building,” Gasaway said.
While the short-term solutions to challenges at Santa Rita are aimed at bringing the facility into compliance with updates to federal and state law and the requirements of the consent decree, they are also serving as the beginning stages for new projects that will be brought before the board in the future, as well as the development of an overall master plan for the jail.
The update at last month’s meeting was informational only, with further short-term and long-term efforts to improve conditions at Santa Rita set to come to the board in the future. However, supervisors lauded the efforts currently in place under Sanchez’s short time in office thus far, as well as her overall vision for the jail and its relationship to other challenges facing the county’s population.
“It’s nearly impossible to rent a place to live, very difficult to find a job, people end up homeless and in more despair and back in the system again,” said District 1 Supervisor David Haubert, of Dublin.
“On the front end, creating jobs so that people can make a living and rent a space to live and sustain themselves – if all the pieces of the system, as we call it, are working well we can get better, and if any one piece of the system fails we all fail,” Haubert said. “So what I heard today is that we’re really working on pieces that maybe existed in the past, maybe they’re brand new, or maybe we’re going to do a better job at. We have to.”
“I’m excited to hear what we’re doing,” Haubert continued. “I see the shift from inside the jail to outside the jail and I think it’s the right way to go. So godspeed to all of us doing this, and let’s attack this with a moral imperative and a sense of urgency.”
Board of Supervisors President Nate Miley emphasized that changes to Santa Rita were necessary from a public safety perspective – and that safety should be a concern for those incarcerated as well as those outside the jail.
“I put public safety first,” Miley said. “Public safety is always paramount. If folks don’t feel safe then I don’t think the government is doing its job. And safety isn’t just in the community. It’s safety when people are in Santa Rita Jail as well.”
Miley also noted that he was hopeful for longer-term changes and solutions at Santa Rita under Sanchez’s leadership.
“What I value is that I’m always going to back law enforcement as long as they’re doing their jobs professionally and consistently,” Miley said. “So with the new sheriff, clearly having the new sheriff’s input on this, and the sheriff was formerly the manager (of Santa Rita) and it’s been pointed out in the presentation there are some things now that we can consider doing that we couldn’t consider doing under the former administration.”