A presentation held Tuesday was supposed to give the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors more specifics on mental-health programming in the yet-to-be-built North County Jail, but proved frustrating for county leaders and those presenting.
The supervisors voted unanimously to receive and file the presentation, but questions still linger about cost.
The county has long needed a new jail to replace the crumbling infrastructure of its current custody facility, but how to fund the ongoing costs of a new jail to be built in the North County remains a sore spot for decision makers.
Offering improved mental-health and substance-abuse treatment programs to those in custody has been part of the plan, sweetening the deal and promising much-needed services for vulnerable inmates, but the supervisors did not get the cost specifics they were hoping for from Sheriff Bill Brown.
“They’re really not fleshed out,” Supervisor Peter Adam said of the details on the new jail’s programming, adding that the lack of a “business plan” or the like for the new jail caused him concern.
“We want to understand what we’re saying yes to.”
Data on inmates with mental-health issues in jail now, how often they re-offend, as well as how money would be spent and targeted to programming at the new jail was all lacking Tuesday.
When pressed on this, Brown explained that the jail’s information system is “very antiquated” and not conducive to finding that type of data.
Brown said he would be back during budget hearings to ask for the $1 million needed to replace the jail management system as well as a much-needed electronic health-records system, which currently is being kept in hard copy form.
Many of the new programs for the new jail are still in development, so exact cost is difficult to estimate, he told the supervisors.
“The reality is that the cost of programming per capita will likely be lower in the new jail,” he said, because of how the facility is designed.
The current cost for the combined medical and mental-health services in the jail is $4.8 million per year.
Because the new jail will provide housing units with their own classroom and common areas, services can be brought directly to inmates, saving costs being spent now when custody staff have to escort inmates from facility to facility, Brown said.
The Sheriff Treatment and Re-entry complex, or STAR, will have 128 beds, and will have programming available within their housing units, which will be more like dorms.
Classrooms, a training kitchen, exercise facilities and a computer lab —and even the potential for an inmate dog program that would bring in animals from the shelters — would all be part of the set up.
“The design of the new jail — and I can’t emphasis this enough — will allow enhanced programming opportunities,” Brown said.
Programming for inmates is paid for not from the county’s general fund, but by volunteer time and monies from the inmate welfare fund, which is generated by telephone call fees, commissary charges and the like.
The department did share that 122 people in the jail are taking psychotropic meds, and only 22 people out of that number are involved in programming, with the rest choosing not to participate or for other issues.
People can stabilize in jail, said Acting Chief Julie McCammon, but when they are released, will go off their medications and potentially re-offend.
Since 2009, the Sheriff’s Department has had a discharge planner in the jail, who will work to coordinate medications on release and social services for people.
The supervisors also heard about some of the programs offered in the jail, such as anger management, grief recovery, and relapse prevention for substance abuse. All of the jail’s programs are limited by an antiquated jail facility and minimum staffing, she said.
Still, the supervisors wanted to know how life will be different for inmates with mental-health issues in the new jail.
“What I’m trying to get at is what will be the difference in the new jail?” asked Supervisor Janet Wolf. “Are you expecting that those numbers will increase and what will be the cost?”
Wolf said that it was never talked about how much the programming would cost in the new jail, and CEO Mona Miyasato said that a presentation about the cost of operations in the entire jail will be brought before supervisors in November.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
