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Contra Costa Times Malaika Fraley column

Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA) - 10/9/2015

Oct. 09--OAKLAND -- The Alameda County Sheriff's Office is seeking a $54.3 million state grant to expand mental health services at its main jail in Dublin.

The Sheriff's Office wants to construct a new administration building for mental health staff at Santa Rita Jail and to refurbish two of the jail's existing housing units to use mental health programs and services, Lt. Jason Arbuckle said in a presentation to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors Public Protection Committee on Thursday.

The Sheriff's Office has applied for a chunk of the $500 million in revenue bonds for jail programming space needs that were called for in Senate Bill 863 and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown. The Board of State and Community Corrections will announce in November which grant proposals were approved or denied.

More than a dozen people, mostly activists mobilized by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, asked the supervisors on Thursday to reject the money if Alameda County receives the grant. They want the county to shrink Santa Rita, not expand it, and find money to expand mental health services for the mentally ill in the community.

"Poor people shouldn't have to go to jail to receive critical programs, and with pretrial diversion projects already in the works, this jail plan would be a contradiction to that," said Ella Baker advocate Tash Nguyen. "If we can lower our pretrial population, that would free up a lot of space to provide mental health programing in the jail.

"Investing in outpatient care would eliminate the need for inpatient care in cages," Nguyen said.

While Santa Rita's total population has dropped in recent years because of prison realignment and the reclassification of certain crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, its population of mentally ill inmates has remained stagnant.

Santa Rita's mental health unit is getting an average of 50-60 new referrals a day from the intake unit and other jail sources. On a monthly basis, the jail's mental health unit sees more than 1,200 mentally ill inmates, representing more than 45 percent of the jail's current population, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Santa Rita's mental health staff is composed of 5.5 psychiatrists and 12 clinicians, which is considered inadequate and results in inmates considered not to be in an active crisis having to wait weeks to be seen.

The grant money would go to facilities and not to providing more caregivers. It would give them better space to work in, such as designated mental health program areas and administrative space for staff, according to the presentation.

Currently, the clinical staff are providing care around the facility wherever room is available, like in the dining area, with no designated areas for privacy during therapy or counseling.

Contact Malaika Fraley at 924-234-1684. Follow her at Twitter.com/malaikafraley.

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