Santa Rita inmates get say in settlement

The future of mental health care for the 2,200 people held in Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail, along with a proposed $25 million settlement that would bring more sheriff ’s deputies to the jail, are in the hands of a federal magistrate.

But whatever the outcome of a lawsuit targeting conditions at the lockup, something unusual, perhaps unprecedented, has occurred in the case: The inmates’ voices have been heard in court.

For five hours Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins of San Jose, who had ordered the hearing, heard remotely from 39 people speaking from the jail in Dublin. Most are being held before trial or conviction, many have mental health problems, and all of them opposed the settlement.

“The jail doesn’t need to hire more sheriffs. They need to hire more mental health professionals,” one said, a sentiment shared by most of his fellow speakers.

Inmate David Hegis, who described himself as a mental health patient, said he needs to see a specialist once a week, not the current once-amonth schedule, or the 90-day intervals proposed in the settlement for most inmates receiving mental counseling or treatment. And sheriff ’s deputies at the jail, he said, “beat up people in the middle of the night” and “set up fights in cells.”

An even more harrowing account came from Jaclyn Mosbacher, who has filed a separate suit accusing county jailers of mistreating her and other incarcerated women.

“They strip-searched me and threw me outside in the cold for hours,” Mosbacher told Cousins. She said she had been pregnant and wound up with a miscarriage while in an isolation cell, and officers “told me I was responsible.”

“We need counseling to help us stay human,” she said.

Afterward, Yolanda Huang, a National Lawyers Guild attorney, said in an interview that the hearing was “the first time they’ve ever gotten to publicly talk about what they’re going through, how they feel.” Her organization

and others had urged Cousins to listen to the inmates before ruling on the settlement, which he had preliminarily approved in September.

Huang said she had never heard of any previous court hearing in which large numbers of inmates were allowed to discuss conditions of confinement and the resolution of a case affecting them.

The settlement would resolve a lawsuit filed in 2018 over conditions for mentally ill inmates at Santa Rita. Its terms include mental health screenings for new inmates, construction of therapeutic housing units, and new standards for solitary confinement and use of force. It includes $21 million for more than 250 new sheriff ’s deputies at the jail, which has been short-staffed, and $4 million in attorneys’ fees.

Cousins had planned to issue a final decision last week, but instead agreed to take testimony from inmates after hearing objections from advocacy groups including the National Lawyers Guild, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and the American Friends Service Committee.

Kara Janssen, a lawyer for inmates who filed the 2018 suit, told Cousins after Thursday’s testimony that the complaints had raised “some very legitimate concerns” that would all be addressed by the settlement, which followed years of negotiations.

“Conditions at the jail have been horrible in the past” but would be improved by the changes the county has agreed to implement, Janssen said. She said deputies would be trained in handling mentally ill inmates, but that care and treatment would be provided solely by “qualified mental health professionals,” with monitoring from the U.S. Justice Department and the court.

Samantha Wolff, a lawyer for the county, said some of the inmates’ complaints were “demonstrably false,” without giving details, but agreed that all legitimate concerns would be resolved by the settlement.

However, Huang and a number of inmates said conditions were likely to get worse with the arrival of more deputies and the scheduling of treatment only once in 90 days for inmates who are not considered violent or suicidal. Huang said the proposed therapeutic housing units, while potentially helpful, would have room for only about 80 inmates.

The other 2,120 inmates, she said, would remain “locked up 20 hours a day in a room the size of a closet with somebody else,” under the jail’s current COVID-19 restrictions.

Or, as one inmate told Cousins, people in the jail need “more out-ofcell time ... more trained staff to help people with their issues instead of more enforcement. We’re normal people too. We’re just in a bad situation.”

Cousins said the testimony had “added great meaning” to his understanding of the issues, but did not indicate how he would rule. He could approve the settlement or reopen the case for further negotiations that could include community groups objecting to the current proposal.