San Benito County Grand Jury
• 2017-2018
• Agency Response
San Benito County Sheriff's Office*
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Findings and Recommendations 1 findings
F3
There is a staff shortage; often shifts are covered via overtime which cost more money. AGREE 4. County does not have enough medical staff to cover a full 24 hour day. Nor does it have the staff to support the mental health needs of an inmate at the jail. DISAGREE PARTIALLY We do not have enough medical staff to cover a full 24 hour day. We do have an agreement with County Behavioral Health to provide service and care for those with mental health needs, and we are in compliance with state regulations. Programming like counseling, education and rehabilitation needs to be improved. DISAGREE PARTIALLY Although the inmates could potentially benefit from a greater level of programming, we take exception to the Grand Jury's use of the phrase "needs to be improved." We are currently in compliance with the law and keeping pace with our contemporaries. We are underway in the implementation of some programs and the analysis of others.
Related Recommendations (1)
R3
We concur with the Sheriff's Department who expressed the desire for hiring more COs. THIS RECOMMENDATION WAS IMPLEMENTED IN JUNE 2018 AS A BUDGET REQUEST. We encourage the Sheriff's Department to continue its negotiations with Mental Health Services. Furthermore the Sheriff's Department should seek funding sources for full-time 24/7 medical staff. THIS RECOMMENDATION WILL BE IMPLEMENTED The recommendation is to continue negotiations with Mental Health Services, and we are doing just that. The second portion of the recommendation is to seek funding sources for full-time 24/7 medical staff. Both of those efforts have been made. The results of those efforts are still developing. We received an additional $135,000 from the Board Of Supervisors in our 18/19 budget which will net us four additional hours of medical service per day. We hope to eventually secure funding for 24/7 medical services at some time in the future.
* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.