Push on to replace county jail project with treatment facility
SAN JOSE >> Backed by the passionate urging of South Bay criminal justice reform advocates, Santa Clara County leaders are moving ahead to replace a five-yearsin-the-making jail project with a rehabilitation center focused on mental health treatment and gave themselves a 10-month deadline to come up with a concrete plan for the facility.
From now to September 2021, the board of supervisors is aiming to commission feasibility studies, revise an in-progress bidding process, rework a federal consent decree and meet with residents and community leaders to shape the vision for the new proposal.
A unanimous 5-0 vote by the supervisors Nov. 17 was a continuation of plans they signaled in October to rethink the $390 million replacement for Main Jail South — which was demolished over the summer — amid an intense national movement for police and criminal justice reform galvanized by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and numerous demonstrations in the ensuing weeks and months.
The supervisors also were emboldened by an unplanned jail depopulation experiment conducted statewide in which special amnesty and court-induced measures, to keep low-level arrestees out of jail to relieve crowding and stem COVID-19 outbreak risks, did not yield significant increases in crime.
“This is a moment of pride for those of us who have been fighting against incarceration since Michael
Tyree’s murder and through three hunger strikes,” reads a statement from Jose Valle II, an organizer for Silicon Valley De-bug who has focused on improving inmates’ rights and conditions. “It is an acknowledgement that building a jail is not a solution to the harm of incarceration, does not address our communities and our county can and must do better.”
Valle was referring to Michael Tyree, a mentally ill county inmate whose 2015 beating death while in custody led to murder convictions for three jail deputies. It prompted the creation of a board-appointed, blue-ribbon commission that recommended scores of jail reforms.
In a statement, Tyree’s sister, Shannon Tyree, said, “Having mental health support for people like Michael, instead of a jail, will change lives. It could have saved Michael.”
Plans for seeking residents’ input are pending, but Supervisor Susan Ellenberg said Tuesday that it is “critical we engage the community and stakeholders” in shaping the new facility. Board President Cindy Chavez added that those talks need to more closely resemble the civilian-led blue-ribbon commission that came up with jail reforms, rather than committee meetings led by the county.
For years, local activists pleaded with the supervisors to change their minds about the new jail, even as it was touted to be a state-ofthe-art facility geared more heavily toward rehabilitative programming and transitional services. Their main argument was essentially summed up thusly: It’s still a jail, and it maintains the troubling response of incarceration to problems often fueled by mental illness and drug abuse and addiction.
“The premise that jails can be improved is not the starting point we should accept,” said the Rev. Peggy Bryan of St. Andrews Episcopal Church during public comment Nov. 17. “Jails are neither redeemable nor reformable.”
The next 10 months look to be packed if the supervisors hope to reach their selfimposed deadline for next fall. Both the reform advocates and several board members — led in part by outgoing Supervisor Dave Cortese, now poised to join the state Senate — balked at a finding in a county administration report recommending that the existing jail project go forward. As currently planned, the new Main Jail South would be a 535-bed facility on North San Pedro Street set to open in 2024.
An ensuing discussion Nov. 17 attempted to inject some nuance into that finding, with County Executive Jeff Smith telling the board that proposal, approval and bidding processes are years-long endeavors that would mean that inmates would be held at substandard facilities for several more years while those processes are restarted. Instead of scrapping that work, he suggested that the supervisors essentially retrofit the current project parameters with a series of change orders that ultimately still would result in the treatment facility they’re envisioning.
Additionally, the county would need to revisit a federal consent decree over disability accommodations that was predicated on the building of the new jail.