Corrections Department: Madf: Déjà Vu All Over Again

DHS contracting practices and procedures are chaotic, inefficient, and R1. By December 31, 2024, DHS will initiate regular public reports of the take too long. This results in delayed execution of contracts, delays in programs for which an award has been or is intended to be made vendor payments, and local County health services missing for (including those programs without a contractor), the contracts in extended periods. effect, the date of execution of every contract, the contract term, and

DHS processes for procurement needs identification, RFP generation, explanations for any contracts not executed prior to the effective and competitive sourcing take too long to execute and aren’t clearly service start date (F1, F2). competitive. R2. By November 1st, 2024, DHS and County Human Resources

Chronic short staffing and employee turnover have led to a significant departments shall submit a recruitment and retention plan to the loss of institutional knowledge. County Executive to reduce DHS vacancies to no more than 10% of

Inadequate delegation of authority and a toxic work culture inhibits authorized non-field positions. (F3, F4) individual decision-making and contributes to DHS’s failure to R3. By December 31, 2025, the Board of Supervisors will request, and perform effectively. County Auditor will complete and publish, a comprehensive audit

DHS Fiscal and County general accounting process doesn’t require or report on DHS procurement processes and procedures, contract retain all information needed for post-fact analysis of who is being administration oversight and compliance with County procurement paid, whether the payment was the result of a no-bid contract, or policy and publicly present said report to the Board of Supervisors. (F1, whether payment documentation matches funding source F3, F6, F7) requirements.

County Purchasing and Internal Audit failed to require that DHS follow implement a system that ensures all no-bid and sole-sourced contracts mandated procurement policies. are identified, accounted for as such, publicly reported, and have

The BoS failed to require changes to DHS procurement procedures required supporting documentation and waivers on file. (F3, F4, F5 F despite published reports that DHS has been violating County procurement policy. Main Adult Detention Facility: Déjà Vu All Over Again Every year, the Civil Grand Jury is required to visit jails in Sonoma County. This year, the Civil Grand Jury focused on the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility (MADF), commonly known as the “County Jail”. You may have read a prior Grand Jury report similar to this one; it might have had a different catchy title, like “The Jailhouse Rocks” or “Up Against the Wall” or “Death by Incarceration” but the point is the same. Problems at the Sonoma County Jail are persistent. Why are they so difficult to solve? Part of the answer is that nearly half of the inmates in our jail have been diagnosed with a mental illness: MADF houses the largest concentration of mentally ill people of any County-run facility. But the County Jail isn’t a care-giving facility for people suffering from mental illness; the building was never intended to safely hold this population and the corrections staff isn’t trained to effectively treat them. Compounding the issue, inmates are suffering from an inordinate amount of “in-cell” time. The MADF facility was designed as a “Direct Supervision” facility, where inmates could spend several hours a day outside of their cells. During our investigation, however, inmates were lucky to get out of their cells for 30 minutes a day. What is the reason for this? BACKGROUND Historically, county jails have housed inmates serving short sentences and arrestees awaiting trial, while state prisons housed convicts serving longer sentences and/or needing more substantial facilities. By 2011, California's state prisons were seriously overcrowded, and a federal court required the State to reduce its state prison population. A Stanford Criminal Justice Center publication 3 describes the State’s response to Assembly Bill 109 (The Public Safety Realignment Act) but in short, the inmate population in county jails 3 https://law.stanford.edu/stanford-criminal-justice-center-scjc/california- realignment/ The full text of all the Grand Jury’s reports is available at any county library or online at www.sonomagrandjury.org significantly changed with the passage of AB109, and the MADF was forced THE INMATE EXPERIENCE to change as well. The MADF has a rated capacity of 912 inmates, but the makeup of the The largest change has been in the number of mentally ill inmates housed present inmate population does not allow the use of all beds: inmates with in the MADF. Twenty years ago, 15% of the inmate population suffered from mental health issues may require special separation from the general mental illness, eight years ago, 40% of inmates at the adult detention population and gang rivalries may require member segregation for both facilities (North County Detention Facility (NCDF) and MADF) had some staff and inmate safety. As a result, the number of usable beds can change form of mental health issue. Today nearly 50% of MADF inmates suffer daily; the currently available bed count is 864. The number of inmates in from mental illness. the jail fluctuates between 700 and 850. Mentally ill inmates spend even more time in their cell than other inmates THE ROAD NOT TAKEN due to their need for increased supervision; for example, an inmate In 2015, Corrections officers started working on an innovative solution to classified as Seriously Mentally Ill (SMI) requires 3 correctional deputies to the growing problem of mentally ill inmates: a Behavioral Health extension move and monitor them during OCA. As you might imagine, these to the MADF. This jail unit was designed to house and treat 72 mentally ill conditions can aggravate already existing mental health issues. Wellpath, inmates, with cells, space and medical offices created to meet these inmates’ the contracted vendor that provides basic medical and mental health special needs.4 The County and Sheriff’s Department applied to the services to inmates, works with CO’s to form a mental health team that California Board of Corrections for a construction grant to build the addresses acute situations but there is no individual mental health extension; the $44,675,000 budget was approved in 2017 to break ground counseling offered. The Wellpath psychiatrist prescribes medication to in 2018 and be operational by 2019. alleviate acute symptoms, but telehealth psychiatric consultations (while Unfortunately, county budget and construction resource constraints after offered) are in limited supply and challenging to schedule. the Tubbs fire put the plan on hold, and then the COVID pandemic came The bottom line is that being an inmate in the MADF is unpleasant. If you along and… 7 years later, state construction funds are still available but are an inmate with mental health issues, your experience is most likely building costs are up: the construction cost estimate has now risen to excruciatingly unpleasant. Staffing shortages are currently being approximately $60,000,000. vigorously addressed by the SCSO. These efforts should result in more OCA A facility like this would improve confinement and treatment for mentally time but there is reason to be doubtful; currently OCA is significantly below ill inmates, would free up time for CO’s in the general population modules, Title 15 requirements for most inmates. Can we really expect sustained and would increase Out of Cell Activity time (OCA) for prisoners in the change for mentally ill inmates? Unless there are significant improvements, MADF. It can only be built with sponsorship by the Board of Supervisors— we will be reading a similar version of this report again in the year 2034. the need is clear, and the plan is still good. Discharge planning is vital for mentally ill inmates reentering the community. Typically, more than a third of newly released inmates were homeless at time of arrest. Many have medical issues that require a physician’s care and medication; substance abuse disorders need treatment and access to recovery services. Mental health problems require ongoing support and monitoring. STAFFING A corrections officer’s principal job is to maintain a safe and secure environment for inmates in their charge. It takes more than muscle to do a good job; they must also be highly observant and attuned to their environment. The influx of inmates with mental health issues means they need to recognize (sometimes subtle) signs of emotional instability and be effective communicators to defuse situations that could become violent. Corrections officers as a group are more likely to experience violence, stress, burnout, mental health challenges and divorce than other law enforcement personnel. In fact, correctional officers are twice as likely to THE MADF TODAY experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as military veterans MADF was built to house three types of inmates: people being held who have served active duty.5 pending Court proceedings, people convicted by the court and sentenced to Staffing shortage the county jail, and people incarcerated pending transportation to other facilities (i.e., state prison). Correctional institution understaffing is a nationwide problem, and Sonoma County is no exception. The staffing shortage predates the Each cell is discrete with solid block walls and windowed metal doors; pandemic but was exacerbated in 2020 by a County-wide hiring restriction there are no iron cages. Most of the cells house a single individual with a followed by a wave of retirements from 2022-2024.The 2024 MADF bed and toilet. Cells open up to large common areas where inmates can budget has 179 Correctional Officers but the 165 on-board correctional staff congregate for a variety of activities. includes 27 who just graduated at the end of April, 44 hired earlier in 2024, and 43 unavailable because of injury, medical leave, or “processing out” (retirement). This leaves only 122 officers actually available to work —and 4 https://sonoma.courts.ca.gov/system/files/countydetentionfacilities2015- 5 https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/corrections-officers 2016.pdf The full text of all the Grand Jury’s reports is available at any county library or online at www.sonomagrandjury.org 71 of them are such recent hires that they aren’t yet allowed to work Hiring and retaining Correctional Officers needs to be the highest priority. independently. SCSO has made real progress: recruitment and hiring have gone up and Short staff means more lockdowns and very little OCA, causing higher mandatory overtime has gone down. The Sheriff’s May newsletter inmate frustration and aggression, which makes the CO’s job more announced that Detention will be fully staffed this summer. Now, attention difficult. Mandatory overtime was required to keep the staffing at a bare- needs to turn to retaining the best officers and replacing any staff that bones level, resulting in exhausted CO’s working up to 100 or more extra doesn’t measure up. hours per month per officer. Excessive overtime impacted the SCSO Robust substance abuse treatment services are needed inside and outside detention budget, but it had an even more detrimental impact on staff: the jail. Two recent developments are encouraging.: in March 2024, the fatigue, low morale, stress and burnout, and increased threats to safety and BoS authorized SCSO to execute an agreement with GEO Reentry Services security for both staff and inmates. To its credit, the Sonoma County to provide substance use disorder treatment services to MADF inmates; Sheriff’s Department tried various ways to reduce mandatory OT and ease outside the jail, the “Dr. Sushma D. Taylor Recovery Center” will soon stress on officers and inmates, including contracting with Solano County to provide medically managed withdrawal services for low-income male house up to 75 Sonoma County inmates. However, these are only patients, with 50 beds for those in our county struggling with addiction. temporary remedies; hiring, and keeping correctional staff, is the most Sustained commitment and collaboration are essential to continued important strategy to alleviate these conditions. improvement. The Board of Supervisors, and Sheriff’s Office must work Recruitment and Retention together to find (and fund) solutions to the problems facing the MADF staff Why has it become so difficult to hire and keep correctional deputies in and the inmates under their authority. Sonoma County? The pool of qualified candidates is shrinking; police work FINDINGS (especially corrections) has decreased as a career choice during the past