Sonoma County to consider $49 million jail addition for inmates with mental health problems

Aug. 17--Sonoma County jail officials are proposing construction of a new, $49 million behavioral health facility to accommodate sharp increases in the number of inmates diagnosed with various forms of mental illness.

The 72-bed facility, which would be built on county land just north of the main jail near Highway 101 in Santa Rosa, would open in 2020.

It would house inmates now held in three specialized units of the main jail including those deemed incompetent to stand trial who are awaiting beds at Napa State Hospital and others with severe mental illness.

Inmates suffering less-acute behavioral issues who now are among the jail's general population would be moved into the special units, resulting in the closure of a wing at the lower-security North County Detention Center.

A report on the proposal, which goes before the Board of Supervisors Tuesday, says it will help deal with a 400 percent increase in inmates diagnosed with mental illness since the jail opened in 1991.

Now, about 14 percent of the jail's 1,123 inmates have acute mental illness and 38 percent have some level of mental health problems, said Randall Walker, the county's assistant sheriff for detention.

"Mental health inmates are our most rapidly increasing population," Walker said Friday.

The facility would be paid for by a combination of $40 million in state jail construction money, $6.2 million in county tobacco tax funds and other local sources.

Sonoma County will vie with other counties for the state jail funds, part of a $160 million pool set aside by the Legislature last year for medium-sized counties, said Mary Booher, a county administrative analyst working on the facility.

The county must apply by Aug. 28.

"It's competitive," Booher said.

The county has balked at moving forward with other big-ticket jail proposals. It dropped plans advanced by the Board of Supervisors in 2013 to build a $67 million, 160-bed detention facility for inmates transitioning out of jail and those on probation at a high risk to reoffend.

Up to $50 million for construction of that project was set to come from state jail funds. The county would have been on the hook for the remainder, plus an estimated annual cost to run the facility of $11.5 million, a price that Sheriff Steve Freitas acknowledged as steep and which two supervisors called the "elephant in the room" when the board unanimously endorsed the proposal.

An update this year found no additional beds are needed in the roughly 1,500-bed system. It's configuration, however, does not provide the most therapeutic environment for inmates with mental health issues, according to the county.

The so-called behavioral health jail unit will have 38 full-time employees at an annual cost of $5.8 million. The closure of a north county unit would reduce that cost to $4.9 million a year.

Preliminary plans call for a facility of 33,400 square feet with 48 cells, half of which will be double-occupancy.

All the cells will have windows, providing inmates with natural light "to enhance the therapeutic environment," according to a county staff report.

Two separate housing units within the facility will have individual and group counseling rooms, a medical examination room, a day room and visiting rooms. Large-group programming space will also be built.

Further planning and design would take place over the next few years with construction starting in January 2019. The facility would be complete by September 2020 and is slated for occupancy by December the same year, according to a report.

It was one of several projects called for in the 2009 criminal justice master plan to address jail crowding, including a day reporting center, a felony resolution court and electronic home monitoring.

Supervisor Shirlee Zane, the board's criminal justice liaison, said it is a much needed project. Mental health is a top concern among county officials and law enforcement chiefs nationwide, she said.

"We need to provide more intense treatment to people with mental health problems," she said. "We need to get them the care they need so they don't re-commit the crime they were charged for in first place."

You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ppayne.

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