Sacramento County considers new Main Jail addition to fix ‘dangerous, inhumane’ facility
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is moving forward with an expansion of the Sacramento County Main Jail to alleviate the lingering problems with a downtown facility once marked as “dangerous, inhumane and degrading.”
Kitchell Construction is in line to receive a $10 million contract to oversee the design and construction of an addition to the jail that would add space for the medical, mental health and programming needs of inmates. The Board of Supervisors will consider the contract during the afternoon session of its meeting Tuesday.
The jail expansion has been controversial to local activists who want the county to focus on decreasing the incarcerated population instead of expanding the lockup, located at 7th and I Streets downtown. The county also operates a second jail in Elk Grove, the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center, which has 2,627 beds.
County staff said the intent of the expansion project at the Mail Jail is not to increase the facility’s bed count, which can now house as many as 2,432 inmates, “but to improve the facility to achieve positive outcomes and reduce recidivism.”
In April 2020, the Board of Supervisors hired the Nacht and Lewis Architects to begin designing the new facility that will be on “back fill space” cleared on the site of the downtown jail. The contract with Kitchell will allow them to assist the architect in the process.
Together, they will design the final plans that detail what the new facility will look like. County officials said a general contractor will be selected at a later date.
Kitchell was selected over three other firms. The company, which has companies based in Phoenix and Sacramento, was also the manager for the renovation of SMUD’s headquarters, the Harris Center for the Arts in Folsom, and is the general contractor for the renovation of the performing arts center in downtown Sacramento.
’Dangerous, inhumane and degrading conditions’
In 2015, the nonprofit Disability Rights published a report that concluded the jail staff excessively isolated inmates, offered inadequate mental health services, and effectively violated the rights of those incarcerated with a disability. The group was in talks with the county on ways to make jail conditions better until the discussion fell apart.
After Disability Rights California and the Prison Law Office filed a lawsuit over the conditions inside its jails, the county has been under intense pressure to make improvements. A year ago, a judge approved a consent decree that forces the county to make several changes to ameliorate the “dangerous, inhumane and degrading conditions” inmates were kept in.
The lawsuit alleged that the jail staff failed to properly screen inmates for mental or other health concerns; did not provide canes, wheelchairs, glasses or hearing aids for disabled inmates, and that the facilities were chronically understaffed.
The case was settled in 2019 and the agreement to overhaul the jail’s health system was approved in January 2020. Court monitors now submit reports to a judge every 180 days to track the county’s progress.
The contract has already mobilized activists in the group Decarcerate Sacramento, which advocates for alternatives to jail. The group released a statement Monday that alleged little has changed in the year since the county has been operating under the terms of the consent decree.
“The county has not explored all alternative options for meeting the consent decree requirements without the construction of a new building.” Tifanei Ressl-Moyer, an attorney with the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, said in a prepared statement.
“County staff have yet to fully address the options of diverting populations with mental illness and people who use wheelchairs from the jail to proven alternatives.”
This story was originally published January 25, 2021 at 1:16 PM.