Limit Jail Expansion Now

Santa Barbara supervisors will decide April 1 how many jail beds are needed to rectify inhumane conditions in the South County Jail. The county will remodel part of that jail to retain 120 beds at a projected cost of $17.6 million. In 2024, it housed about 400 people daily.

The North County Jail has 376 beds. Adding 256 more beds, or one jail housing unit, is now estimated to cost $100 million or more to achieve a county-wide total of 752 beds.

This is both a costly and imperfect solution to secure public safety. Despite this, Sheriff Brown wants taxpayers to pay for not one, but two new jail housing units, for a total of 1,008 jail beds. Building more beds than are needed will irreversibly commit us to a long-term policy of over-incarceration.

Few dispute that violent, repeat offenders need to be jailed to protect public safety.

For low level non-violent offenders, community-based alternatives can better protect public safety and at far less cost. Jails don’t adequately treat mental illness; they exacerbate it. Community-based treatment offers better long-term outcomes and fewer returns to jail. Community-based supervision (probation) can provide accountability and public safety. Jailing people who don’t need to be there causes trauma, fractures families, results in job losses, and increases recidivism.

Among 732 jail residents held in January, 130 were charged with misdemeanors, 87 had diagnoses of Serious Mental Illness. Sixty percent were on the mental health treatment roles, and 66.5 percent were neither convicted nor sentenced. Our Latino community is disproportionately jailed (e.g., currently 61 percent Latino). Poor people who cannot post bail make up to 90 percent of those in jail.

Over-building jail beds makes no fiscal sense. Crime trends are down, and projected population growth is modest. The Sheriff’s push to add 512 new North County Jail beds, for a county total of 1,008, would exceed the current jail population by more than 33 1/3 percent. We don’t need this.

A bigger jail = Bigger, chronic operational cost-overruns. The county spends $332 a day for each person in jail. For fiscal year 2024-2025, the Sheriff’s operational budget is $96.4 million. Adding one jail housing unit should not require more staff as the South County Jail will have fewer beds. To staff 1,008 jail beds, however, would dramatically escalate operational costs, perhaps by up to one third, extrapolating from our jail population and costs.

It is fair, and necessary, to consider Sheriff Brown’s fiscal track record in this context. Currently, 30 of the 230 custodial staff positions remain vacant. Sizable signing bonuses are used to entice new staff; still,the Sheriff’s Department is unable to fully staff the jails. The go-to fix is to impose mandatory overtime on staff, resulting in substantial cost overruns each year. Mandatory overtime demoralizes staff, causes burnout, and leads to retention problems.

This isn’t working. Our Sheriff and county are defendants in the costly Murray federal lawsuit because of inhumane jail conditions. The facts resulted in a stipulated judgment. We should not build 1,008 jail beds that Sheriff Brown cannot feasibly staff; without adequate staff, jail conditions will not improve as the Murray case requires. Sound county policy and governance should not sacrifice community-based solutions for exorbitant, long-term jail costs.

Sensible Solution: We ask county supervisors to be fiscally prudent and limit new jail beds to 256 or fewer. Use capital and operational cost savings to strengthen community-based resources and infrastructure that will sustainably reduce our jail population, reduce recidivism, and protect public safety in a humane way.

The authors represent the joint Criminal Justice Workgroup of the Santa Barbara Chapters of Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE-SB) and The League of Women Voters (LWVSB).