Sacramento County Grand Jury
• 2004-2005
• Agency Response
Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Lou Blanas Sheriff July 27, 2005 Honorable Michael Virga, Presiding Judge*
⚠️ Aviso de traducción: Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Findings and Recommendations 3 findings
F1
Page 1
The staff of the Main Jail was negligent in allowing inmate mail drops to remain unsecured and at risk of being accessed by other inmates. The Grand Jury was advised that a total of 16 mail drops needed to be made secure. Regarding Finding 1: The Sheriff's Department agrees with this finding.
Related Recommendations (1)
R1
Page 1
Unsecured mail drops should be repaired promptly as promised by Main Jail authorities. The 16 mail drops were fixed immediately in September of 2004 when the Main Jail was notified by the Grand Jury of the unsecured mail drops. During subsequent visits by the Grand Jury in late 2004 and in early 2005, the mail boxes were checked by the Grand Jury and found to be in good working order.
F2
Page 1
Jail floor officers did not notify maintenance personnel of defective slots so repairs could be made in a timely manner. Regarding Finding 2. The Sheriff's Department does not agree with this finding as the cause of the problem, but has identified and resolved the problem as addressed in Recommendation 2. REFER ALL CORRESPONDENCE TO: SACRAMENTO SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT • P.O. BOX 988 • SACRAMENTO, CA 95812-0988 Honorable Michael Virga July 27, 2005
Related Recommendations (1)
R2
Page 2
Main Jail staff should develop a procedure to ensure that mail related deficiencies as noted in this report are promptly reported and repaired. When the Grand Jury inspected the mail drops in September of 2004, a maintenance system existed to repair the mail drops, but it was not being consistently followed. A review of the entire Main Jail maintenance system was conducted to ensure maintenance requests were completed in a timely manner. As a result of the review, deficiencies were noted and immediately corrected. During the year, additional maintenance requests for the mail drop boxes were completed and the broken boxes were repaired immediately.
F3
Page 2
Jail staff, in responding to inmate complaints of mail not received or delayed mail delivery, instructed inmates to review the rules regarding correspondence in the Inmate Handbook. Regarding Finding 3. The Sheriff's Department agrees with this finding and has taken additional steps as outlined below in addressing Recommendation 3.
Related Recommendations (1)
R3
Page 2
Main Jail staff should post next to the mailbox in each pod a sample envelope addressed per the rules in the Inmate Handbook. An example of inmate correspondence, prepared as directed in the Inmate Handbook, has been posted above all of the inmate mail drop boxes in each of the pods. Additionally, the website at www.sacsheriff.com has been updated with directions for the public to send correspondence to inmates housed at the Main Jail. Main Jail mail officers have also been supplying correspondence directions to inmates in response to grievances dealing with inmate mail issues. These directions list "how to" examples on the grievance reply to assist inmates with mail and correspondence problems. As always, please feel free to contact me for further information on this or any other issue. My direct telephone number is (916) 874-5712. Very truly yours, SHERIFF LOU BLANAS Cart C/ Dwarg # 24 Captain Mark M. Iwasa Commander, Main Jail Division
* 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.