Mental Health Reform in the Jail
In their op-ed of November 4, 2023, spokespeople for the Santa Barbara League of Women Voters and the Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice detail the failure of the Santa Barbara County Jail to provide adequate mental health care for the inmates. It should be noted that this failure is chronic. Worse, the Sheriff has for years co-opted the Board of Supervisors by promising mental health care in the jails to get funding for their expansion.
Opponents of such expenditures have long explained that jails are not a salutatory place to help this cause for reasons of environment and the fact that jail terms are set whereas health-care needs are indeterminate and often long enduring, among other realities.
But do not excuse County Mental Health — under whatever title it takes [currently Behavioral Wellness]. CMH has opposed expansion of locked care mental health facilities since before I became County Public Defender in 1975.
They hid behind the alleged 16-bed limit, refusing to advocate for the resources that would be needed to provide in-county care for the large population of our people in need of such. Of course they did “study” the problem. They have always been about delay and avoidance. And they want a caseload of less difficult patients which the small PHF [Psychiatric Health Facility] makes possible. Historically they fill the 16 beds with tractable people and send the more difficult problems to the jail.
So the call of League of Women Voters et al. to “Appoint the county departments of Public Health and Behavioral Wellness to provide active monitoring and oversight of the Wellpath contract, with transparent, timely reporting and improved care” is not a realistic improvement on the decades of disservice done to the mental ill of our county.
What needs to be done is to reform not just the jail and its staff but Public Health itself. Provide a monitor from outside, maybe court appointed, that will hold both county agencies to account and set a deadline for improvement. Specifically, this should include a new locked care option in the county outside of the jail and the resources to operate it humanely and follow up with out-of-custody effective support and monitoring.