Sheriff to release 203 inmates to halt outbreak as COVID cases quadruple at Sacramento jails
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said it would release over 200 inmates early from its two jail facilities in response to a new COVID-19 outbreak among inmates and the surging number omicron cases in the region.
The move is necessary, the Sheriff’s Office says, to make adequate space in the facilities to place those with or at-risk of COVID in quarantine pods to stop further spread of the virus.
Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Rodney Grassmann said in a news conference Thursday afternoon officials are following criteria that will provide early releases for inmates who are least likely to commit another crime.
On Thursday, there were 76 confirmed COVID-19 cases among inmates at the Main Jail in downtown Sacramento and 48 confirmed cases at Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center near Elk Grove, county health officials announced in a news release. Adult Correctional Health staff confirmed the new outbreak on Tuesday, and the confirmed cases are from new inmates, inmate workers and close-contact testing, county officials said.
On Jan. 5, there were 27 confirmed COVID-19 cases at the downtown jail and none at RCCC among 3,461 inmates housed at both facilities, according to the Sheriff’s Office. That means the number of confirmed cases at both facilities more than quadrupled in eight days; from a total of 27 COVID cases to 124.
“The transmission we are seeing in the jails mimics what we are seeing in the community,” Sacramento County Public Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said in the news release. “This omicron variant is very contagious and easily spread from person to person.”
The jail facilities are designed to hold 3,250 inmates between them, according to previous Bee reporting. Grassmann said there are about 400 inmates who should’ve been transferred to a state hospital or prison but remained at the county jail as transfers have been halted due to the pandemic.
“Doing this (early jail) release, we can create the space that we need to be able to do that,” he said. “There’s no other way around it at this point.
“This is a very hard thing for the Sheriff’s Office to do.”
Decarcerate Sacramento activists have been pushing county officials to reduce the jail population, including those inmates awaiting trial, as the COVID pandemic has worn on. The jail has returned to pre-pandemic population levels, said Liz Blum of Decarcerate Sacramento.
“It is far from enough to truly make an impact,” Blum said about the number of inmates to be released.
California Department of Public Health officials on Thursday reported 108,000 new lab-confirmed cases statewide, bringing the seven-day average to about 87,000, or 216 per 100,000 residents. That means about one in 66 Californians tested positive for COVID-19 last week, not including unreported at-home test results. The statewide case rate now exceeds the peak from California’s winter 2020 surge.
County health officials said inmates who test positive for COVID-19, those with symptoms awaiting test results, inmates with no symptoms but who have come into close contact with infected people and new inmates who arrive at the jail facilities are housed in one of four quarantine jail pods in accordance with health safety protocols.
Any inmate exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms are tested, along with all inmates exposed to someone with COVID symptoms.
“We are working closely with Correctional Health staff to conduct contact tracing and mitigate the spread,” Kasirye said. “Quarantine protocols are in place and extensive testing is being done.”
Since July, the Sheriff’s Office has offered the vaccine to inmates in exchange for a $20 jail commissary incentive funded by a federal COVID-19 grant. Grassmann said new inmates are booked at jail and tested for COVID-19 each day, but sometimes the results can take a couple of days.
“As you can see, you can have an introduction of COVID very easily in the jail,” Grassmann told reporters. “Inmates can say ‘No, I don’t want that vaccination.’ They can say ‘No, I refuse to wear a mask. No I refuse to distance myself.’ They have that right also.”
Report on COVID at the Sacramento County Jail
A Dec. 2 report on COVID-19 at the jail from the Sacramento County Office of Inspector General listed problems areas that include:
▪ Jail overpopulation and the lack of adequate space.
▪ Placing symptomatic inmates with unverified COVID-19 status in the same housing pods with quarantined inmates.
▪ Weak adherence by some inmates, especially those on work assignments and attending training, to COVID-19 protocols related to the wearing of masks and social distancing.
▪ Weak enforcement of COVID-19 protocols by some jail staff in some isolated incidents.
▪ A large number of inmates have refused the COVID-19 vaccine.
In response to a jail COVID-19 outbreak confirmed Oct. 20, The County Board of Supervisors instructed the Inspector General to review COVID-19 practices and protocols. The Inspector General spent four weeks speaking with Adult Correctional Health staff and Sheriff’s Office staff at both jail facilities.
The report, presented to the Board of Supervisors last month, says Correctional Health and the Sheriff’s Office “have been transparent and responsive in identifying potential problem areas and proactive in addressing the current outbreak... ACH and SSO have worked together to implement a number of follow up actions to help control the outbreak.”
“This outbreak reinforces the fact that the jails are overcrowded and there is not enough space to limit the potential for COVID-19 exposure,” according to the Inspector General’s report. “The best distancing measures are wasted if there is not the space necessary to safely separate the potentially infected from the healthy.”
Sheriff emergency jail release order
On Thursday, Sheriff Scott Jones issued an emergency order for the early release of 203 inmates to create more space to quarantine inmates at the two jail facilities. Grassmann said the inmates who will be released are all convicted inmates serving jail sentences.
There will be 74 inmates released from the downtown jail and 129 inmates set free early from RCCC. Grassmann said they started the process of releasing those inmates on Thursday afternoon, and it will likely take up to two days to complete that process.
The Sheriff’s Office will use the same criteria used in January 2021 Sacramento Superior Court order to release inmates with 90 actual days or less remaining on their jail sentence. Grassmann said inmates not eligible for early release under the sheriff’s order will be those convicted of domestic violence, driving under the influence, any conviction requiring registration as a sex offender and any serious or violent felony.
In addition, Grassmann said the early release is not available for inmates who are on active restriction for so-called assaultive behavior or other serious charges or convictions. He also said “chronic nuisance offenders and serial inebriates” would not be considered for such release.
Inmates who have been ordered to serve a mandatory jail sentence with a specific amount of time to serve behind bars also will not be eligible for early release. And inmates with active criminal protective orders or domestic violence restraining orders will not be released early, Grassmann said.
“When we look at the folks that we’re going to release, we’re looking at their history in totality,” Grassmann told reporters. “Obviously, we don’t have a crystal ball to see what somebody might do. But we are trying to look at and minimize any problem that there might be after the release.”
Jael Barnes, a pretrial justice organizer for the Decarcerate Sacramento activist group, said the sheriff’s order only includes a small fraction of inmates who should be released, especially those with underlying health problems and awaiting trial. Sheriff’s Office Data shows 79% of jail population in October were inmates awaiting trial.
“It’s ridiculous, because most of the folks in there are pretrial (and not eligible for this release),” Barnes told The Sacramento Bee. “That’s unacceptable. That just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Barnes’ husband, Jamaine Barnes, has been in custody at the Sacramento County Jail since May 2019 awaiting trial. His wife says her husband went into the jail with only severe anxiety but has since developed asthma and contracted COVID-19 twice.
Her husband was fully vaccinated when he among over 70 inmates at both county jail facilities infected with the virus during a mid-October COVID-19 outbreak. She says he has not contracted the virus during this recent outbreak. She said she applauds the decision to release 203 inmates from the jail, but it’s not enough to prevent the virus from spreading.
There were a total of 331 inmates at the two jail facilities on Thursday who were awaiting transfer to a state prison to serve their sentence, but California corrections officials have halted transfers at this point. The county jail facilities have about 80 inmates awaiting transfer to a state hospital to restore their mental health or determine their mental competency.
Grassmann said there are about 400 additional inmates in the Sacramento County Jail who would normally would not be housed there at this time, along with a backlog of Sacramento Superior Court criminal cases slowed by the coronavirus pandemic that has crowded the jail facilities.
This story was originally published January 13, 2022 at 6:24 PM.
