tv [untitled] January 23, 2014 10:00pm-10:31pm PST
10:00 pm
credit to 33%. also giving milestone credits to the same population. and another litigation decision, the butler decision is basically going to now force courts to instead of giving 15 years to life with an open-ended sentence when that individual would get out, they'll have to go on record as to what that release date will be. and the only thing that can impact that date would be the in-prison behavior, positive or negative, which also everyone that is in prison right now that has one of those 15, 20-year to life or what have you, they have to by court order be taken back to the board's hearing and decisions being rendered. there are other strategies that have the potential and have, probation has implemented with the court three-day reports. motion to revoke, and what that means is instead of having somebody sit in jail for 21 days while we did a board report, we've shortened that down to three days. well, that saves the difference between 3 jail bed days and 18
10:01 pm
jail bed days. you know, then you do the math. that equates to a lot of adp. but again i guess i want to circle all the way back around to say san francisco has done a fantastic job with realignment. i think the questions that have been asked and the issues, the moving parts that are unknown right now really needs to have some time to play out. the environmental aspect of having that report then gives us a year to relook at that. and i completely support the board's analyst recommendation to let that time go. let's take a look and get some of these answers, and then see and make a better decision a little bit further down the road. >> thank you very much, chief. and i know that we have our public defender in the audience as well. i want to thank public defender adachi for his patience. thank you for being here and thank you for your report. >> thank you very much and good afternoon. my office provides legal representation to over 20,000
10:02 pm
people every year. about 80% of the people who are in custody are our clients. they're not just there just to sit and wait in due time, but they're there to get justice through the courts. and that's why i do believe that it's important that we have a facility that is close to the courthouse. and i'm not in favor of having all of the pretrial prisoners housed at san bruno. for many years the prison population or jail population in san bruno was limited to post conviction or people who are post sentence. and we rarely had a client that we had to go out and see at san bruno unless it was the same situation. now it's very common. i know we have clients at san bruno. and, so, our attorneys have to
10:03 pm
travel back and forth and it's a good 25, 30-minute drive out there at times. and, again, i think important for our attorneys to have access to our clients. and it's also important for the families to have access to the clients. that being said, from the revised forecast based on the 2013 data, the number that they're estimating is between 1,6 26 and 1,7 88 ~ as we have heard. now, if they close county jail 3 and 4 all together, the remaining capacity of the rated jail beds would be 1,53 2. as of today and i checked this morning, ~ they're 1,315 people in custody. so, that's actually 200 less than the capacity of rated jail beds if we close county jail 3 and 4.
10:04 pm
but even using that higher forecast, san francisco would have to come up with alternatives to house under the moderate number 94 people in custody and at the more conservative number, 256. and, so, i do not believe that this small number justifies building a replacement jail and a $1 billion price tag. now, there are a couple things that mr. rose mentions in his report that i think bear noting. one is the fact is that we have an excellent pretrial diversion program. this is a program that's created under statute, but it's unique to san francisco and a few other counties that has an extensive pretrial diversion program. according to the report, there are 1,127 participants and for people who don't know what pretrial diversion is, it's for low-level misdemeanors. and instead of going to jail or facing trial, a person can elect to do community service,
10:05 pm
some kind of restorative justice solution. and the advantage is not only [speaker not understood] conviction for employment purposes going forward, but it also allows you to have a clean record. and, so, you don't have a record that is going to be an obstacle to employment. and mr. rose found that even given the existing program, 60 more people could be diverted or released from county jail if the district attorney and the sheriff successfully implement new programs or policies that would result in more cases going on pretrial diversion. really all who cited extensively in the report has been pretrial diversions with the founder of the program, it's been over 30-year, it's a tremendous job. i believe that that program can and should be expanded to include more cases and more
10:06 pm
programs and not fewer. the cost of pretrial diversion is fractional what it costs to keep people in custody. also note that there is nothing in the report about how the sheriff's funding that is receiving through realignment and under the uses of alternative incarceration like electronic monitoring and home detention, those things are not mentioned in the report and i'm sure that the sheriff probably has more information on that. as the police chief mentioned earlier, from what we've seen, the decrease in the inmate population has been driven primarily by decrease in the number of arrests mostly in drug cases. and we think that this is a good thing. more people are going into treatment. the diversion programs that we have for drug treatment are being utilized. the behavioral health court, the mental health court is doing very well. and, so, we will continue those things. but again, these are programs that could be expanded.
10:07 pm
and we just need to put our heads together and figure out how we can change some of the criteria of these programs. for example, our behavioral health court only serves individuals who have a san francisco address. we had a situation earlier this year where a person who was obviously very mentally ill gave an out of county address. and for that reason was released and was not able to participate in the behavior health court which would have resulted in a better long-term result. we've seen a 28% decrease in the number of jail bookings, 32% decrease in the number of new criminal filings. we expect this to continue. and, again, looking at the number of individuals in jail today, we could close county jails 3 and 4 and we would still be fine. one issue that i wanted to
10:08 pm
mention that i think went counter to everything that we're doing is bail. most people are in jail today because they're poor. you could be accused of murder and get out of jail as longs as you have a million dollars to post for bail. you can be in jail for trespassing and because you don't have $50 or $500 to post your bail, you're going to be in jail. and, so, the way that the bail works now is that the courts and the judges, they meet every year, they figure out what the bail should be. that's how the state law allows the setting of bail and each county sets their own bails. recently the court announced a new bail schedule which dramatically increased bails by thousands of dollars. so, this is something that we really need to look at. if we follow the lead of states like maryland that have reformed their bail schedules, they look at factors such as,
10:09 pm
you know, length of time in the area, your criminal arrest record, all those kinds of things to figure out whether a person should be released. it is not simply based on how much money you have. i just have a couple of questions that i wanted to ask be addressed in any future reports. if you're asking what my position is, there needs to be a jail facility near 850 bryant road, where the hall of justice is. does it have to be a new facility? the answer is no. the question i have is has the sheriff commissioned a study into looking -- into converting a portion of county jail 1 to build rated beds. what we were told is county jail number 1, that's the book and release facility, right? so, it has a holding capacity of 2 98. and then county jail number 2 ~
10:10 pm
has 3 92 rated beds ~. it's a solo indication for women and it houses now both men and women. so, the question is, you know, can we take some of the beds that are in the holding capacity to build rated beds. and do we need the entire 2 98 capacity ~ to cover people who are being arrested every day. i would guess not based on the number of cases that we are seeing. if we converted nonrated beds to rated beds, that would add in and of itself 74 beds to current capacity, which would further decrease the need for replacement jail. and that would take care of the problem that we might have in even, you know, 2019, if we had 250 more people in custody. i also want to note i think having a cushion of jail beds is not a good thing because it disincentive eyeses the use of alternative to incarceration.
10:11 pm
the other thing i worry about, too, ~ if we have a bunch of empty beds the state could come in and place people in those facilities. and, of course, we would be paid for that, nonetheless, i don't think most san franciscans would favor that. obviously we need to reduce the over incarceration of african-american men and women in our jails. that's i think a priority. my office we formed a racial justice committee to look at that issue and we're going to be coming up with some recommendations as to what we can do from our end. and, you know, i do think that if we do not have the excess beds available, the sheriff is going to be forced along as -- with the other criminal justice partners -- to use alternative site community programs and electronic monitoring. i think that would be a good thing. so, i know the controller's revised forecast remains to be seen.
10:12 pm
we're going to wait until the environmental report is going to be done. i think that's a good thing. we'll get a better sense of the trend. but i guess the big question i have is can we modify or remodel county jails 1 and 2 to address any needs that we have and then we wouldn't have to build a new jail. if we do determine we have to build a new jail, obviously it should be the smaller jail, not the larger one. thank you. >> thank you, mr. adaji. if we could ask, sheriff, if you want to -- >> i very much appreciate the comments of the public defender. but i want to bring up my chief deputy of custody. i think there was just some misstates or misspeaking on the calculations. so... >> supervisors, good afternoon. matt freeman, chief deputy san francisco sheriff's department. it's good to see you again. as you know, the facility commanders that manage the various county jails report to
10:13 pm
me. so, i'm intimately aware of the entire san francisco county jail system. and i think it's just important to point out the public defender had referenced the fact that with the count as it is today, the sheriff's department could completely close county jails 3 and 4 and still be just fine. and i think that that doesn't take into account what has been referred in many of the documentation has been written, we call the classification factor and the need to keep separate and segregate dispaired groups of the inmate population when you think in terms of maximum, medium, minimum security inmates. when you think in terms of gender nonconforming, inmates that need protective custody. our jail psychiatric population and others. so, to simply say it's that
10:14 pm
easy, i do not believe is an accurate statement. especially when considering the county jail facilities and their existing form which many of you had an opportunity to come and tour and see for yourself. so, to that end, it would not be possible for us to safely house the prisonerses that are currently in the county jail right now without not simply closing the 6 and 7 floor, county jail 3 respectively, and not replacing them, and it also doesn't take into account conditions of confinement and the ability of the sheriff's department to deliver programmatic content, the ability to have classrooms as evidenced by our education corridor in county jail number 5 where the 5 keys charter high school sees to it that inmates that want the opportunity to obtain high school equivalency
10:15 pm
or their high school diploma, multi-purpose room space and vocational training space. so, i think it was important to point that out in response to that comment. >> okay, thank you, chief. if we can now hear from our district attorney. i know we have chief of staff who district attorney george bascone, christine [speaker not understood], thank you for your patience. >> my pleasure. good afternoon, supervisor campos, supervisor yee. i'm here on behalf of district attorney george [speaker not understood]. i'll be brief. what i wanted to point out is how reassuring it is to hear from every partner we have in the criminal justice system that reducing our incarceration numbers is something we all care about. and i think that is something that distinguishes us as san franciscans. and something that we should exalt and build around. so, as we look at whether a new jail is the right path for san francisco, i think it's important to keep those values at the forefront of that conversation as have been expressed to a person,
10:16 pm
everybody that participates in this system. the district attorney obviously is the flood gate for who enters into the jails after an initial arrest, we make the determination who should be charged with a crime. we make arguments about who should be held while they're facing that charge, and we are the largest driver in addition to the courts of who remains in custody, either pre- or post conviction. it is fortunate to have a district attorney that thinks there are other ways [speaker not understood]. incarceration is just one, but not the sole tool to do that. for that reason, in conjunction with his partners, we're at a 40-year low in our jail population and that is no small accomplishment. it has required everybody to participate toward the shared goal and we're seeing positive results from that, something the rest of the state is not experiencing. and we need to take pause and identify what trends have led us to that place and how we continue down that path.
10:17 pm
programs in the district attorney's office that have led to reduction in jail population and i think will continue to lead to such reductions, i'll name just a couple of them, but our neighborhood courts program is a free charging program where we take misdemeanor crimes and rather than charge the person with a crime, we send them to a panel of neighborhood adjudicators and the neighborhood decides how severe the act was and what the consequence for that should be. jail can never be a answer to that he question. it's all restorative in nature ~. in just one calendar year we saw 700 cases through that process. that was a significant reduction in court time and in jail time for many of those people. in addition to that, we have implemented an alternative sentencing planner. an individual that reviews cases with the specific purpose of trying to find a sentence that will seek a crime other than jail and other than prison. and in that work we have seen tremendous results in a quick review of 30 cases that the
10:18 pm
alternative sentence planner had looked at. of the 30 the initial offer had been prison. at the end of that nobody was sent to prison. so, we see a real changes in the way our office is conducting business and how that impacts the rest of the stream in criminal justice. and beyond that in the coming year, we're looking to create a pretrial tool, an assessment tool to help us understand who needs to remain in custody during the pretrial portion of their case. you heard the public defender mention that a vast majority of people are in there for bail. there is also cases where we advocate for somebody to remain in custody and perhaps they are a low risk. but without a tool to help us assess what risk somebody is to the community is very difficult to make an informed decision about who should remain in custody during the pendency of their case. we're looking to use some more science and data to do that work in a more elegant and narrow fashion. and i think we'll see some pretty significant results if we're able to get that project underway as 70% of our jail population is pretrial. that is obviously the biggest
10:19 pm
place to look for reductions. i just want to point out that in 2006 the situation was much different. chief still made some very good points about the fluid nature of things in the state. the good news is things are trending towards more local control. what we see for more local control is we have a tendency to reduce the number of people we incarcerate and to find alternatives to that type of sentence for criminal activity. and i think we'll probably see more of that control return to us as we're now since june and july responsible for hearing the -- conductling the parole hearingsv that were previously handled by the state. [speaker not understood] the decision in sada and others come into full effect, i think we'll see greater impact of those decisions on us as a locality and more opportunity to create the types of policies and programs that we as a community all support and will lead to further reductions. so, i think we see where the trend line is and it may be a bit early to jump into a
10:20 pm
conclusion without a bit more information and time to understand what's happening here. we're happy to continue to be a partner in this dialogue and continue work with our partners at finding ways to make san francisco the safest big city without having the biggest jail. >> thank you very much, ms. [speaker not understood]. unless there are any questions, i think what we're going to do is we're going to begin our public comment to make sure that we hear from folks. and i know that there's a number of community partners that are also here to speak as part of that. so, let me begin by calling on folks to come up. and if you can please as i call your name, if you can line up on the aisle to our left, your right. so, if i may begin with machaela davis from the aclu. jennie friedenbach from the commission on homelessness. [speaker not understood] prigeners with children. [speaker not understood] thomas
10:21 pm
from drug policy alliance. ~ prisoners with children please go ahead. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i want to thank you, supervisor campos ask your staff, for holding this hearing and the rest of the committee for hearing this important issue ~. my name is machaela davis. i'm an attorney at the aclu and we are committed to focusing on alternative to incarceration to address the socioeconomic issues faced by poor communities and communities of color both here and around the state. we are please today see the budget and legislative analyst report give a reasonable projection for the number of needed beds. however, we still think the city should look skeptically at any decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars out of the general fund and ask whether that money could be used to reduce the demand for those jail bed in the first place. any numbers of studies show the money invested in alternative to incarceration and rehabilitation on the front end reduces the need for jail beds in the back end. we need to be investing in rehabilitation supportive housing, mental health services and education that will lower
10:22 pm
recidivism and lower crime rate and reduce the need for those beds. when you add the returns from those investments to the benefits that can be realized by the expanded diversion programs in the city, it remains to include whether we need the scale down facility. importantly, i think, though, the budget analyst report provides a good starting faint 230erth analysis to our alternative to incarceration. i think it's only the beginning. as has been pointed out today, we need to take a comprehensive look at how our pretrial program has been functioning. the budget report state that had there is about 1,000 people on currently participating in those programs at any given time. we're please today see that. there are a thousand people at any one time in jail that are too poor to pay bail. as data da's office just said, they don't feel like they have the proper tool to make those decisions so we really need to work together to make sure all the agencies are coming together to have the right information to make pretrial release decisions. we also think that as chief
10:23 pm
still has noted, the city is coming together in a pcp and the reentry and the sentencetion commission, we have all of our stakeholders together working on comprehensive criminal justice plan. the discussion for need for more beds any beds needs to happen in the context of increased diversionary programs and discussion on front end investment to keep our communities safe. thank you. >> thank you so much. next speaker. i'm going to call a few more people. laura magnoni. rome a guy. hanna mason. harriet sebastian. emilie harris. hi, my name is jennifer friedenbach, executive director of the coalition on homelessness. i think we can all agree we want fewer people incarcerate and had we want to make sure that those who are incarcerated have humane conditions. i really pleav we can utilize this debate as an opportunity to correct the poor harms san franciscans face.
10:24 pm
step back and look at not only how many can be diverted from the criminal justice after arrest but prevent people from being arrested in the first place. in my work at the coalition on homelessness we see people who end up in the criminal justice system simply as a result of their status of being poor. as being poor people of color, as poor people who have nowhere to live who perhaps suffer from mental illness or addictive disorders, and people who are considered repeat offenders for being so offensive [speaker not understood] arrest in public. other people who are so desperate forest that they are forced to break into buildingses and sleep or desperately hungry they steal food. we know as has been studiously demonstrated repeatedly that we save huge and criminal justice costs when we invest in substance abuse treatment. we know investmentses in supportive housing saves criminal justice costs. we know nationally increasing number of people are being locked up who are suffering from mental illness and that in fact mentally ill people are being warehoused in our jayv. in fact, we're seeing rising numbers of jail people
10:25 pm
suffering from mental illnesses while jail populations are decreasing. we also know that inmates who have been homeless or those who report episode of homelessness any time in the year before makeup about 15% of the u.s. jail population or 7 to 11 times the estimated homeless people in the population. a few years ago when we looked at san francisco, 27% of our inmates are homeless. i'm hoping we can look at this as an opportunity. just think of how we could invest that money, which is at least 27 million a year just in the bond service, in doing a lot more. we could estimate -- we can make major contributions in substance abuse treatment and supportive housing -- >> thank you. there are a lot of possibilities. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. may name is dorsey [speaker not understood] and i'm executive director of legal services for prisoners with children. and i think that we're going through a paradigm shift where
10:26 pm
we really reduce the numbers and we need to guard on that. i did write a public statement. i find my testimony here to be extremely uncomfortable because i generally respect the man occupying the office of sheriff. i have heard him speak on many occasionses and have walked away feeling a sense of great pride that san francisco has chosen such a remarkable person. however, on this issue of building a new jail, i think that he is selecting to line up on the wrong side of history in our current day needs. very much like other elected officials of old who chose to fight the poor conditions of slavery and not for its abolition. one day history will judge, should we have chose to fight -- should we have chose to have fought harder, to dismantle institutions that can so easily be identified as vessel of racism? over half the peopleses caged
10:27 pm
and chained are african americans in the city, where our presence and future does not look bright. i know that we are not here to talk about race, but it is hard to talk about cages and chains in this county and in this country without raising the obvious. perhaps we should ask the fundamental question. if not now, when? when is it an appropriate time not to build a jail? i read the report and did -- and it suggested that thing that make me wonder why are we here. i'm not used to showing to fight construction of jail when you have so many favorable circumstances not to build a jail. we are not currently not here because the jail is overcrowded. we are not calling for construction of the jail because of our abnormal peak in crime. we are not calling for a jail because crime is on the upward trend. >> thank you. we are not calling for a jail because the dar, the
10:28 pm
public part of probation department is saying they're going to use it more. >> thank you. i'm going to read a few more names. (applause) >> jimmy lloyds. veronika shepherd. terry anders. [speaker not understood]. charles minister. next witness, please. [speaker not understood] co-president of the harvey milk lgbt democratic club. first of all, thank you for having this discussion and enabling the community to participate in this. i think the decision reflects our values and our priorities as a community, and i encourage members of the board of supervisors ~ to be very thoughtful on this. san francisco has been a model for many years in taking a public health approach to drug rather than a criminal justice approach. you heard that even from our own police chief today, and the results are documented in the report that you have in froth of you. and i want to emphasize that
10:29 pm
the number of people that we choose to keep in a cage because of their drug use is very much an issue that is in our control locally. the numbers have dropped because of changes in policy and changes in policing practices here. we can continue to prioritize health and community-based approaches, restorative justice approaches and harm reduction approaches and continue to bring those numbers down. the approaches have been shown time and again to produce better results for families, communities, and neighborhoods and the cost the taxpayer less. i particularly want to highlight the lead law enforcement approaches to diversion program which is referenced on page 19 of the report. it's been incredibly effective in seattle. it's now very popular both with business owners, with police, with community members in giving police the discretion to divert people pre-booking before they get booked into the services that they need. we can invest in our health services and our community and further reduce our jail
10:30 pm
population. we can use these sorts of evidence-based effective approaches. and we owe it to our community to try those approaches first. before we start building more cages. in particular, for people whose primary reason for engaging with the criminal justice system is a health condition. whether that's mental health or drug use. i want to thank the community members for their leadership in [speaker not understood] raise this issue. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. good afternoon, mr. chairman. laura [speaker not understood] representing the friends service community [speaker not understood]. healing justice in our san francisco office. the person who was supposed to represent us today is sick with the flu and she has a much better historical basis than i can give you in two minutes, but i can say that the american friends service committee has been working ~ to prevent more jails from being built in this town for decades. and the struggle is clearly not over.
46 Views
IN COLLECTIONS
SFGTV: San Francisco Government Television Television Archive Television Archive News Search ServiceUploaded by TV Archive on