SACRAMENTO, California — Incarcerated peoples' advocates are calling for the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors to pull out of contracts related to the Main Jail expansion as recently-released documents show the proposed cost balloon by more than $200 million.
Supervisors plan to vote Tuesday on an updated $654 million Intake and Health Services Facility.
This comes after a lawsuit settlement known as the Mays Consent Decree called for county officials to improve jail conditions in 2020.
Weeks before the updated cost was revealed, the County Grand Jury reported jail conditions have not improved much in the three years since the Mays Consent Decree was approved.
Representative of the nonprofit Decarcerate Sacramento Liz Blum helps run a hotline for incarcerated people to call volunteers and talk about the problems they're dealing with.
She said county officials need to prioritize jail depopulation and other recidivism efforts rather than more building and jail staff.
"The most effective and fastest way to address short staff in the jail is to reduce the jail population," Blum told ABC10. "They don't consider at all investments in prevention and investments we're seeing in places across the country that are really effective."
Signed by more than 20 other local organizations, Blum sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors urging them not to move forward with their current jail expansion contracts. The groups say that $600 million could be better spent in the community.
"We need to be offering preventions and alternatives and services, and so that way we could reduce the jail population actually wouldn't need to build anymore jails. We'd actually be able to begin to close them," said Mackenzie Wilson, with Decarcerate Sacramento.
Justice2Jobs co-founder Lynn Berkley-Baskin sent a similar letter to supervisors Monday—saying that a $925 million debt cap is twice as high as the previous estimates.
She told ABC10 that infrastructure improvements and increase accessibility for incarcerated people with disabilities won't do anything to change the culture of the prison.
"Their (the county) culture is about harming people," Berkley-Baskin said. "They believe treating people poorly and punishing them will actually make them better, but it won't/ It will exacerbate the trauma and release them in an even worse condition."
Sacramento County Board of Supervisors Chair Rich Desmond did not respond to request for comment.
However, Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper spoke out ahead of the vote and planned protests.
"We want to make it better, but this is going to go a long way in helping us do that," said Sheriff Cooper.
Cooper said the funding will cover a new Intake and Health Services Facility.
"The booking loop where inmates are booked in and seen by jail medical is not ADA compliant. Although it was built in 1986, it's not compliant right now. And then also our medical floor and our psychiatric floor, it brings those into compliance," said Cooper.
It's why Cooper said calls to abandon the jail expansion are misguided.
"They are not realistic. The defund the police crowd, we know it doesn't work. The citizens don't support it. They're not going to stand for it, and we're going to proceed. We're going to build it. We have to build it. We're caught between a rock and a hard place," said Cooper.
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors plan to vote Tuesday on the jail expansion.
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