Expanding Sacramento’s downtown jail would waste $1 billion in taxpayer money | Opinion
The County of Sacramento is trying to spend $1 billion in taxpayer money — no, that’s not a typo — to add a new mental health annex to the County Jail in Downtown Sacramento.
It is a complete and total waste of taxpayer money, and they have to stop before it’s too late.
They’ve already spent more than a million in planning and hiring consultants to tell them the building as envisioned does not meet the requirements of the federal ruling that is the impetus for a jail upgrade in the first place, and an expansion will do nothing to solve the inhumane treatment of prisoners that plagues our jails.
Now the supervisors have put the project in bureaucratic limbo to create another committee and hire another round of consultants.
But wait, it gets even better. Experts the county has hired and community advocates both say it is unlikely to only cost $1 billion, but could cost up to twice as much; a price tag current Sacramentans and generations of Sacramentans will be paying in taxes for decades to come.
If the county supervisors are looking for a way to meet the requirements of the Mays Consent Decree, then they must start by changing the inhumane and notorious treatment of inmates inside the Sacramento County Main Jail and the Rio Cosumnes Correction Center.
(The Main Jail is used mainly to hold pretrial detainees. Rio Cosumnes is used for holding prisoners serving longer sentences. The Mays Consent Decree is a federal judgment that originated in 2019 as part of a federal class action lawsuit.)
The plaintiffs in the Mays case were former and current incarcerated people who said they had experienced inhumane and unconstitutional conditions including a desperately understaffed medical department and vindictive treatment by prison guards who violated their Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
That’s not my opinion: A federal judge ruled that Sacramento County was in violation of the inmates’ constitutional rights and must provide adequate care in both the Main Jail downtown and the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center, within a six-year deadline that is rapidly approaching.
Inmates report sickening and deadly conditions like wounds becoming infected, being removed from medical care before doctors’ recommendations as punishment, having medicine withheld as punishment, inmates not given time outside or access to sunlight, no communication to lawyers or family, an inmate nearly bleeding to death forced to collect the blood in milk cartons, and women going through labor inside cells the size of a bathroom.
“People are just afraid to complain, and the ones who do complain, they get made examples of,” said Terry Sharp, a former inmate of both the Main Jail and RCCC, who made public comment at the board meeting on Wednesday. “Everybody that’s been (in jail) for years says ‘Listen, man, it’s been going like this for years. You’re an inmate, shut up bro. Because you’re going to make it worse for yourself.’”
Supes can still fix their mistake
On Wednesday night, the County Supervisors met yet again to discuss the downtown jail expansion project, having hired another consulting company to tell them if the expansion project met the requirements of the Mays Decree. (Spoiler: It does not.)
Not only did the independent reviewers — CGL Companies, a consulting group specializing in building jails, and based in Natomas — find that the architectural program and conceptual design fell short of achieving compliance in the Mays Consent Decree, it found that the architectural and conceptual design of the annex did not meet the standards of the American Correctional Association. They reported there were several key factors of the plan that need more work before the county could even hope to support the jails’ future population estimates.
(The price tag for CGL’s assistance with that review? $600,000.)
The supervisors voted on Wednesday— after hours of public comment begging them to address the problems inside the jails — to accept the recommendations of CGL, ie, pausing the project where it currently is to return to exploring all of their options.
But the supervisors are still clinging to the idea of a jail expansion, and they will waste hundreds of thousands of dollars more to hire yet another company to tell them what they already know: A jail expansion is not the answer.
Expanding the downtown jail will neither fix the inhumane treatment inside the county jails, nor will it provide for a rising jail population.
Sacramento County Public Information Director Kim Nava says the county has made progress toward improving their jail policies and processes, including hiring a policy consultant, designating a medical observation cell, developing a new method for informing inmates of their court appearances and medication, and a new program that provides care for inmates who who have reported suicidal ideation.
But this project needs leadership, and if it’s not going to be the county supervisors, then it must be external forces.
Board chair, Supervisor Phil Serna, has repeatedly expressed the feeling that he is being “boxed in” to approving the jail expansion plans, a sentiment he repeated Wednesday afternoon. But one has to wonder, who exactly is boxing him into this decision?
Another committee?
Sacramento County supervisors voted 4-1, with Serna against, to accept CGL Companies’ recommendations in totality. Those are to suspend the current expansion project until the board: Creates (yet another) committee to monitor the accountability of the planning process; contracts more planning services; have them produce (even) more analysis — and all this to present the Board of Supervisors with another list of options, of which we can all only hope “DON’T BUILD IT!” is one.
I fear Sacramentans will be paying off this mess for many generations. Creating another committee says clearly that the supervisors don’t know what to do.
This story was originally published February 28, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
