SANTA CRUZ — Local jails are facing issues ranging from illegal drugs, overcrowding and staffing shortages — concerns the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office agrees are a problem.
In a recently published formal response to the Santa Cruz County Grand Jury’s June report, “2018–2019 Detention Facilities Inspection Report,” the Sheriff’s Office wrote in August that it was in the process of obtaining a leased full-body scanner that would detect drugs coming into facilities, is engaged in long-term planning around jail overcrowding and has taken steps to reduce staff overtime.
The grand jury report, primarily based on jail facility tours in August 2018, offered four findings and five recommended actions, including two recommendations already implemented and a third in progress.
The grand jury is required to conduct an annual tour and inspection of the facilities as part of the body’s mandated duties. The Santa Cruz County Grand Jury is a civic body composed of 19 members chosen from the voter rolls, driver registration records and applications submitted by the public to serve a one-year term.
Making Changes
Looking to address overtime requirements for jail staff, the Sheriff has worked to make improvements to the mandatory overtime assignment system, hired retired correction officers for extra assistance, assigned deputy sheriff trainees to the jail and temporarily assigned deputy sheriffs to the jail, according to the Sheriff’s Office response.
One area the Sheriff’s Office balked at approaching was the report’s recommendation that corrections officials investigate creation of subsidized housing for detention facility staff who must “commute long distances because local housing is unaffordable, increasing staff stress.” The Sheriff’s Office response noted that although housing was outside the office’s scope, officials would cooperate in recruitment and retention efforts.
In a formal response from the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, county officials wrote that the housing crisis affects all local residents, including county workers. “Attainable housing” is a goal listed as one of the county’s six major focus areas in its strategic plan stretching through 2024. Also, an objective in the county’s 2019-21 Operational Plan includes the creation of a county facility master plan that would study the feasibility of creating affordable workforce housing, according to the county response.
Crowding Concerns
Separately, a nearly perennial finding, most recently in 2013–14, 2014–15 and 2016–17 grand jury reports, involves overcrowding at the Main Jail. This year’s report recommended that the county evaluate long-term solutions such as bond measures to replace or renovate the facility.
The report states that overpopulation is “exacerbated in part due to the passage of AB 109, the Public Safety Realignment Act,” with an average daily inmate population of 375 inmates — equal to 17.5% above rated capacity.
Undersheriff Craig Wilson said Monday that Main Jail has faced overcrowding problems since it opened in 1981. However, a multi‐discipline 15-member Criminal Justice Committee on Jail Crowding, the first such to convene on the topic since 2004, is scheduled to meet five times before the end of the year, Wilson said. He said thus far, it is clear to the committee that the Sheriff’s Office has taken conventional steps to decrease overcrowding and may next need to turn its attention toward larger systemic inefficiencies in the criminal justice system. A final report on the committee’s findings is expected to be released publicly by the end of the year, Wilson said.
“There’s no one big thing that’s probably going to reduce crowding at the jail that’s identified as of yet,” Wilson said. “But we will continue to meet, just so we understand the issue and where the pressures are coming from.”
Wilson said that even if the county was given $100 million to build a new jail — no such funding appears to be on the immediate horizon — it could take as long as six years before the facility was available for occupancy.
September 30, 2019
Santa Cruz Sentinel
By Jessica A. York
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