Mental health expansion of Santa Rita Jail on indefinite pause
A woman pushes a cart at Santa Rita Jail. Aug. 22, 2023
DUBLIN, Calif. - The controversial expansion of a mental health building at Santa Rita Jail has been halted indefinitely.
The announcement of the pause came at the Alameda County Board of Supervisor's meeting on Dec. 12.
The county’s General Services Agency only cited "operational delays."
The jail expansion had originally been projected to be completed in 2027 and was contingent on approval by the state’s Public Works Board.
The proposal was ultimately pulled from the Public Works Board’s agenda on Dec. 7, which Kimberly Gasaway of Alameda County’s General Services Agency said was the deciding factor in halting the project’s schedule, according to Micky Duxbury of the Interfaith Coalition for Justice in our Jails.
Duxbury noted the item was pulled from the state board of Public Works when faced with a letter from Sen. Nancy Skinner, which raised serious concerns about the necessity of this building.
The board was also confronted with letters of opposition from the Mental Health Advisory Board, the CareFirst Task Force, Care First community coalition and the Interfaith Coalition for Justice in our Jails, which gathered signatures from 23 clergy and 100 individuals.
Gasaway recommended that the board explore repurposing other areas of the jail and other alternatives to meeting the mental health needs.
Joy George of Restore Oakland said she and other community groups are celebrating the project’s delay as a significant victory, but want more to be done.
The special meeting was originally requested by Restore Oakland Inc. and family members impacted by incarceration, who organized a No Jails and Stolen Land rally on Nov. 28.
George said for the last eight months, community advocates and county-convened task forces have pushed back against the jail expansion, stating that such an investment of county funds will only serve to deepen the county’s reliance on incarceration in the face of an under-resourced behavioral health care system.
The jail expansion proposal would have added 40,252 square feet to the Santa Rita Jail complex to build a new standalone building in order to "expand the facility’s mental health treatment capacity" and increase staffing to 107 clinicians at a cost of $81 million.
Had the supervisors committed to this proposal, the county would have contributed $26.6 million of taxpayer dollars to the construction of this facility – an increase of $19 million from Alameda County’s original jail expansion plan in 2015.
Sheriff's officials have long said that the jail was built in 1989 and is not designed to treat or house people with mental illnesses.