As California jails become coronavirus hot spots, Sacramento sheriff tries to avoid outbreak

Los Angeles County jail inmates who have tested positive for coronavirus since the outbreak began as of Friday: 290.

Alameda County inmates who have tested positive at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin: 36.

Sacramento County inmates who have tested positive at the main and branch jails: 1.

As county jails and state and federal prisons nationwide have grappled with crippling outbreaks of COVID-19 among inmates and staff, Sacramento sheriff’s officials say they have had a remarkable experience so far, with only one inmate and no staff testing positive for the virus.

And they want to keep it that way.

“That’s the hope,” said sheriff’s Lt. Shaun Hampton, who has overseen a series of policy changes at the Main Jail on I Street that includes a ban on all visitors, releases of hundreds of non-violent inmates to create more room inside the facility, regular cleanings, social distancing reminders for inmates and strict rules about who gets into the jail.

That means no one gets inside the facility without first having their temperatures taken and being questioned about their health. When officers arrived with a new inmate, they’re directed to park.

“They’ll direct them to a parking space and they will meet them outside the back of the car with a nurse,” Hampton said in a recent interview at the sheriff’s headquarters. “Before they even get out of the car their temperature is taken.”

As of this week, sheriff’s officials say, 226 inmates have been tested for COVID-19 and one came back positive: a woman who entered the jail in late April and was kept in quarantine for seven days. She was still in isolation on Wednesday, the same day she tested positive and was released from custody.

Sheriff’s officials say she never came into contact with other inmates on the jail’s seventh floor, but that area was placed on lockdown as a precaution.

Another 82 tests are pending. Five employees at the Main Jail also have been tested, and all were negative.

The success the sheriff’s department has had at the jail, which in past years has been criticized as woefully unprepared to handle inmates’ needs, stems from work that began in earnest in early February.

At the time, court sessions still were taking place in the first floor of the jail building, bringing in hundreds of people a day who crammed into the hallway together awaiting arraignments and other hearings.

“We started engaging in conversations with public health and correctional health (officials),” Hampton said. “How would we address this should it come into our building? And what steps can we take to prevent coronavirus from entering the main jail?”

One of the first steps was obvious: Reduce the number of people inside.

The sheriff’s office initially released 120 inmates who were within 60 days of their release dates to make room at both jails in the event there was a COVID-19 outbreak. A court order near the end of March required releasing another 421 inmates.

Sheriff Scott Jones estimates that another 560 have been released because of zero-bail requirements.

Sacramento jail population cut

The population in the jail, which holds about 2,500 inmates, was cut to about 1,500, partly because deputies also cut back on the number of people being brought in to be booked.

“Those intake numbers have gone way down,” Hampton said. “Before this this all started taking place we averaged between 90 to 140 in a 24-hour period. Now, I think our highest 24 hours for bookings is right around 48, and that was kind of an anomaly because they had been averaging in the 20s.”

The result is that many people who in the past might have been booked at least overnight are not being brought in at all.

“So we want to make sure that we take all the violent folks off the street, and we want our officers to do what most organizations within the region have done to decrease their bookings,” he said. “But those violent offenders we want to get off the street. The people that are in our jails right now are the people that you do not want in the community.”

But as the virus continued to spread and some jail systems nationwide started to see sharp spikes in infections among inmates and staff, more steps were taken. All social visits to inmates by friends and family were stopped on March 16. Three days later, superior courts shut down, ending the parade of people making their way to courtrooms in the jail.

Inside the jail, deputies were spending time talking to inmates about social distancing, Hampton said. Chairs and tables were moved around inside break rooms to keep employees from getting too close while they ate. People who could work from home were told to do so.

Elevators inside the jail were taped with an X as far apart as possible to tell inmates where to stand to keep them from close contact.

Cleaning supplies, gloves, masks and sanitizers were doled out to staff, and inmates got access to various cleansers, although not to alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

“We don’t give that out to inmates because they will drink it,” Hampton said.

Coronavirus threat to inmates

Newly arriving inmates who are suspected of being sick walk through a tray with bleach solution to disinfect their shoes. Those who are booked into the jail are housed for seven days with someone who came in on the same day before being released into the general population.

Despite the efforts, there have been complaints about the safety of the Main Jail and Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove. Public defenders have insisted the jail poses a threat to many of their clients and have gone to court repeatedly trying to win inmate releases because of the danger of the virus.

Federal defenders were ordered by their office not to conduct in-person visits to clients in the jail, and now handle them through video set-ups.

Prosecutors also have raised concerns about how to handle arraignments and other hearings safely, and the jail has set up videoconferencing systems that are being used for “visits” and for court hearings that are being live-streamed on Youtube.com and show prosecutors weighing in via Zoom.

Inmates making their initial appearances can be seen coming into the courtroom cell, where deputies wearing face masks spray and wipe down the bars after each visit.

Some inmate family members remain concerned about conditions inside, saying inmates complain to them that there are not enough opportunities for inmates to keep clean and that some in the jail are clearly sick.

“They’re not able to wash their hands, they might get to do it once a day,” said the mother of one inmate who asked not to be identified to avoid problems for her son. “He expressed to them that he has respiratory condition but they don’t care, they don’t care about these guys at all.”

Hampton says that simply is not the case, that “I can tell you this place is spotless and I intend to keep it that way.”

“It’s important to us to make sure our population is safe and that they’re there for the judicial process,” he said. “They’re not there for us to punish them or to keep things from them.

“We want to make sure that we’re doing right by our community.”