SAN JOSE — A proposal to resume the creation of a new Santa Clara County jail has sparked outcry from civil-rights advocates who thought they’d secured a pledge from elected officials last year to instead develop a treatment center for people with mental illness and drug addiction.
In a report to the Board of Supervisors, county executive staff recommended that the board move ahead with a long-planned 535-bed building that would replace Main Jail South, a decades-old complex that was razed last year.
But with less than 24 hours before that report was set for a potential vote, Supervisor Susan Ellenberg said she has “really serious concerns” with the document, primarily that it did not adequately reflect community recommendations that people in the criminal-legal system who are suffering from mental illness or drug addiction be provided a facility for treatment. She is requesting that the supervisors’ formal discussion of the report be pushed back to January so the public can have more than a few days to digest the 450-page document.
“One of the most unifying responses was that people with serious mental illness should not be kept in jail,” said Ellenberg, a vocal proponent for decreasing incarceration in the county. “It was not incorporated and it does not appear to inform the recommendations whatsoever.”
Ellenberg was referring to surveys, community-engagement sessions and jail focus groups conducted by the W. Haywood Burns Institute and EMC Research after they were ordered as part of the supervisors’ pivot last year.
EMC reported that its survey of 800 registered voters in Santa Clara County revealed that just 10% favored only building a new jail, while 34% favored building a behavioral health facility, and another 34% favored some combination of both. The surveyed voters “overwhelmingly” agreed that people arrested who have mental illness or drug addiction should be taken to treatment, but also that jails remain necessary.
The Burns Institute found widespread opposition to a new jail and sentiments that jail conditions are inhumane and heavy. Even Sheriff Laurie Smith, despite board scrutiny over her running of the jails, has changed her stance on the issue to supporting a psychiatric treatment facility instead of a new jail.
The jail-replacement project on North San Pedro Street next to the existing Main Jail had been planned for several years, at an estimated price tag of about $390 million. But momentum halted almost exactly a year ago after supervisors, prodded by criminal-justice reform activists riding political momentum following the police killing of George Floyd, directed county staff to explore alternate projects.
“That’s a slap in the face,” said Jose Valle II, an organizer with Silicon Valley De-Bug, referring to the new jail proposal. “The board of supervisors and the administration, their values will really be standing out if they move forward with this jail. They say they want to stop institutional racism, and this is an institution built on racism.”
The same report under consideration Tuesday outlined an alternative, 465-bed “behavioral health detention facility” run by a health director, with the sheriff’s office providing security.
In the county staff’s recommended jail project, two-thirds of the beds would be dedicated to mental-health treatment and the remainder to people transitioning out of jail custody. Perhaps its most primary difference from the medically oriented alternative project is its operation by the sheriff’s office.
County Executive Jeff Smith said that distinction is a legally necessary one. He contends that besides needing a new jail facility to satisfy federal consent decrees over inmate conditions and disability accommodations, the county cannot detain anyone, even for their own safety, in a facility run by a non-law enforcement entity.
“The advocates have confused the issue significantly … They think you can put up a facility and have it run by (the) health (director) or someone else. And then have individuals incarcerated there by the courts. That’s not legal in California,” Smith said. “If it’s a jail, it has to be run by custody. It has to be built with state laws and regulations. So there’s been a lot of confusion that you can just build a big psych hospital and incarcerate individuals there. You can’t do that.”
Smith added that the new jail is necessary to displace people from being held in substandard conditions in the maximum-security Main Jail and the minimum-to-medium-security Elmwood Correctional Complex in Milpitas. The latter facility has been the center of a record surge of reported in-custody COVID-19 infections.
“No matter what happens with jail reform,” he said, “we have to focus on behavioral health no matter what. However, we are going to have to have a jail. And having a jail which meets constitutionally required privileges is important.”
But inmate-rights advocates like Valle and Lori Katcher, a member of Showing Up for Racial Justice at Sacred Heart, contend that the urgency for incarceration alternatives has never been greater.
“We know that the jail system is one of those government institutions that results in systemic injustices,” Katcher said. “Racial justice is not a fad. We’re calling them back to their words. We’re also calling them back to the overwhelming community input.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com