the prisons in this state have not been rehabilitated as they should have been and it's going to be up to the countieses to rehabilitate them. there has to be ~ a lot of citizenry involvement and thing like that. we need to focus on funding the rehabilitation rather than building more facilities. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. reverend glenda hope. i've worked in the tenderloin for 40 years and i'm the founder of the safe house for homeless women escaping prostitution. on the streets in the s-r-os and especially at our safe house, we see an alarming increase in serious mental illness. mental health treatment should be a priority focus for city planning and budgeting, jailing, mentally ill people only exacerbates their problem. our safe house is an example of an effective alternative to

incarceration. drug court, the sisters program, probation officers, judges, and others refer women to safe house. these women are traumatized. many are suffering from mental illness, and especially from ptsd. some are pregnant. they are young. they are old. they do not need to be in jail. we have a comprehensive program and mental, physical, and dental care, education, group therapy, money management, computer training, job internshipses and more. and we do this for slightly over half what it costs to keep a woman in jail. our graduates are working. they are off the street, out of the emergency rooms, off the welfare roll. out of jails, out of courts, and onto the tax rolls. what's not to like? all the programs that provide alternatives to incarceration, particularly residential programs like safe house, are

struggling for funding. a lot of that money would give us a big boost. we would like to open a second house. all the funds would be used for the people we serve and none of it would go to the financierses who had create aid whole new class of homeless people with their evictions ~. so, please, no [speaker not understood] to alternatives. (applause) >> thank you, reverend. next speaker, next speaker. good afternoon. my name is angel reid and i'm a clinical social worker in san francisco. i work with women who are formerly incarcerated and have histories of substance abuse. so, that means i work with women whose mother started beating them to a bloody pull be when they were nine months old, whose father started raping them when they were three years old, and whose guardians started giving them meth and other drugs when they were 9 and 10.

these women are severely traumatized and we are only further trauma ~ traumatizing them by sending them to jail where they are exposed to abuse and violence that is so pervasive within cdcr. what we need is not new jails. we need rehabilitation facilities. thank you. >> thank you. we have a few more speakers. [speaker not understood] crack off. sarah wedsky. debby [speaker not understood]. i apologize if i mispronounce the last name. zoe wilmont and [speaker not understood]. thank you for the hearing. i'm [speaker not understood] and architects and designers for social responsibility, a nonprofit [speaker not understood] and district 9. thank you for representing me. i appreciate [speaker not understood] raised here today. i want to speak to some of the facts that i know you're concerned about. and i've had the opportunity to

read the previous budget, the controller's estimate of forecast and spend time on one thats was released today. there are technical issues in there i hope you'll spend some time on. one is the alternative -- other speakers mentioned the community based alternatives were not assessed even by law enforcement based [speaker not understood] were assessed. one of them, the sheriff's program that wasn't estimated so it basically assumed it would have zero impact on future jail population. of the other programs which they limited to a future total of 60 people per day who might be kept out of jail, even that 60 people was not factored into the population [speaker not understood] they used [speaker not understood]. that seems to me like there is a mathematical problem there. i also notice the transportation costs that have been floated around in these estimates. the most recent number is $300 million over 40 years and that's going to be what's incurred if a new replacement jail downtown is not built. i find that number -- that just totally impossible to fathom. and the reason is because we already have county jail number

5 in san bruno by all accounts that's going to stay hope open. we have 17 years left to payoff the bond. we're already running a shuttle bus service there. it's staffed moving a few more people to san bruno i don't see how that can result in tens of millions of dollars a year in extra costs. lastly i'd like to say if it's true that certificates of participation cadthctionvction be used for service projects but have to be used for capital -- i'm a big fan of the city's capital planning project -- let's expand the capital plan to include the capital needs for alternatives like supportive housing which is half the cost of jail housing. like another safe house resident hope just asked for. that's what i think we can do with that money. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. (applause) hi, thank you for the hearing. my name is adrian [speaker not understood] roberts. i'm a member of the california coalition for women prisoners and we work with people incarcerated in the san francisco county jails and also in the state prisons for women. i also want to say i was born in this city. we at cc [speaker not understood] feel strongly some of the most important voices in this discussion are the very

people who are incarcerated and who can't be here. we want to publicly thank david campos's office who sent in aides to come speak with our weekly group on tuesday nights which i might add is very different than just taking a fewer of the facility. we want to invite the rest of the supervisors to come, contact our organization and come actually sit down in rooms and speak to the people, the very population who are most directly impacted by this decision. so, in that vein i'm going to read statements from some of our members who are currently in county jail 2. a new state-of-the-art facility is irrelevant if it's filled with deputies who abuse their power, with insufficient health care, with lack of continuing education, with no contact visits with our families. a jail house is a jail house is a jail house. it is never safe. i've been in jail pretrial for more than one year. i know people who have been here for up to six years pretrial. if you are concerned about the

burden of transportation for our families, create bail reform. let me raise my kids, not just sit across from them at a table in a crowded room. they want to lock us up and helping the people with their problem. they really don't care at all. this is about money. money they get for having us in jail. the deputies are very disrespectful. they treat us like we're nothing. thank you. >> thank you. (applause) >> next speaker. good afternoon, my name is [speaker not understood] i'm also a member of the california coalition of women prisoners. and i like hundreds of others who are adamant about staffing the building of this new jail, but i'd like to take my time to give space to the voices inside for the people and families who their decision most affect and they will hear there is a pretty unified message. these are from men in the rfcp program in san bruno. "first let me express my gratitude for the rare opportunity to speak about my

opinion regarding the pro poed building of the new jail. i find this strange that a group of people want to tear down the hall of justice to build an institution to lock up humans. 290 million could be invested into programs with a common goal of rebuilding communities. no need for a new jail. if we decrease recidivism. some priorities are out of order. lamar. "290 million, that should be used towards education, public housing, lunch programs, affordable health care, more jails would equal dark days for the youths of san francisco. "how is there enough money to build a bigger jail when there is barely enough money to keep some of our schools? [speaker not understood]. "i believe we the people could come together to learn ways to help people learn not to come to jail by starting funding programs to me a funder's needs of why they come to jail and address those issues in the first place." donald. "i feel the 290 million to use to build another jail is not needed at all. that money could help people

get into programs in education so they will not commit crimes and help people who get out of jail or prisons to get on-the-job training and skills for good jobs." that's from gabriel. >> thank you very much. next speaker, please. hi, i'm diana block and i'm also with the california coalition for women prisoners. and i guess i just first want to say i am really proud to be part of this community here today and all the people who have spoken up from is san francisco, the organizations and the residents. i think this is what keeps me hanging on and being in this city and i really appreciate that, and also the hearing. so, having said that, i also just want to say i think you've heard very clearly the reasons why we should not be rebuilding this jail. and i would like to urge you to think outside of the box, outside of the cage. what san francisco is actually

good at, a few years ago, the only question people would ever think of was paper or plastic. now there is no such thing as plastic in grocery stores in san francisco, which is like a groundbreaking change in the consciousness which is spread across the country. just think, if you could change the question around jails as well, and what an impact it could have for jails around the country and communities around the country. so, the question is not, you know, how many millions to spend, but how to reduce the prison population of the jail of san francisco. how to tree deuce it so that there are no women left in san francisco county jail. ~ reduce and i really hope that you will think of that question seriously. thank you. >> thank you. (applause) >> i'm going to read a few more names. iris biblowitz. angel reid. commander jeff caldwell.

[speaker not understood]. and [speaker not understood]. next speaker, please. hi, my name is [speaker not understood] johnson. i'm a wellness organizer at [speaker not understood] community against violence. we work with low and no eligibility with lgbt [speaker not understood]. [speaker not understood]. most are black and latino people who have suffered through violence and discrimination throughout their entire lives and incarceration is only retraumatized them rather than helping them lead healthier lives. knowing that 75% of our jail population is pretrial, i worry about what jail expansion would mean for our members who wouldn't be able to afford bail. when 56% of our jail population is black men, i worry about what jail expansion would mean for people from my communities who are already being displaced at alarming rates in this city as housing becomes less and less available to them. the people who come to [speaker not understood] for services are struggling to find ways to meet their basic needs such as housing jobs, and health care. incarceration does not solve

the vast need for community services. in fact, it makes it worse. as prison expansion leads to budget cuts to education health care and human services. at [speaker not understood], we found that community services that increase people's health and healing build up public safety while incarceration only leads to more trauma and more limited access to meeting basic needs. we have been able to work with our members to develop healthy approaches to conflict and unsafe situations and to make healthier choices to take care of themselves and those in their communities. leading to reduced rates of violence in their lives. i believe that we should invest in more community services [speaker not understood]. one that help prevent and alleviate the impact of violence our members face. that would be a more cost-effective sustainable and safe solution for our city's most vulnerable people. many of whom would end up behind bars if we expanded our prisons. please consider [speaker not understood] and say no to more jails. thank you. (applause) >> thank you very much. next speaker. good afternoon,

supervisors. my name is pete [speaker not understood]. i work at the california partnership. i appreciate you opening the forum here to this incredibly important issue. we are a statewide coalition of anti poverty organizations. mostly of what we focus on is eliminating poverty in california and we work with clinics and food banks and affordable housing groups to do so. we see incarceration as something that happens to poor people, like hunger, like homelessness, like all of these other -- like poverty. it impacts poor people's lives. we've got a chance here in san francisco to face that head on and instead of going with the -- continue to be the city we all dream of, we're proud to serve, we're proud to work in. so, i want to speak to the fact that what we heard in the report earlier today doesn't reference what the population of the jail would look like if we put these resources into systems outside of the criminal justice system. what if we put this money into real community-based services that are owned by the community, not tie today law

enforcement, not tied to building back into the law enforcement and the criminal justice system. what if we -- if we have to use this as capital money, sure, let's put it into building housing, building clinics, building thing that are not -- if we've got a choice to build something, we have to build something with this money, let's build things we can be proud of. let's build beautiful homes for people in the city of san francisco. i'd also like to say that meanwhile we are having this conversation while organizations would serve the very folks we're talking about, the same folks who are coming to our clinics as well as being locked up in jail, though organizations are being pushed out because of rent. being pushed out because san francisco is too difficult to hold is on, keep a foothold for poor people and the organizations that serve them ~. so, let's talk about what we want the city to look like, who want to be here, and start from that conversation. let's invest in homes, not jails. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. (applause)

good afternoon, supervisors. thank you for holding this hearing. david elliott lewis, co-chair mental health board, city and county of san francisco. one of the things our board does is program reviews and one of the programs we reviewed in the end of last year was jail psychiatric services. so, i toured the jails. i spoke to staff. i interviewed inmates in custody in both cj1, 2, 3 and 4. and i can tell you 3 and 4 needs to be replaced. it's not conducive to mental health rehabilitation. it's not conducive to any kind of recovery. so, given that this place is going to be replaced, where do we put it? do we put it in san francisco or do we put it in san bruno? it's going to go somewhere. 850 bryant has been condemned basically so where are we going to put them? if we put them in san bruno, it's really unfair to the visiting families. they talked about a half hour to 45-minute drive time. a lot of these poor families

can't drive. they have to take public transportation. for them it's a half day to get to san bruno and back. that is really unfair and without these families, you deprive these incarcerated inmates of the support that they need from their families. so, we need a facility and this is not jail expansion. several people incorrectly talked about this as jail expansion. this is actually a jail reduction. the new facility would have fewer cells, more program space, and much improved family visitation space. the current family visitation space for men in san francisco is horrid. it's just horrible. so, this would be a much more humane facility with better mental health facilities. and while i'm all in favor of more pretrial diversion and actually be putting people in jail at all, for those that have to be there, this give them the absolute best facility we can. so, again, i hope you will consider funding this and replacing the facility with

fewer cells, better cells, more program space, better visitation space. thank you. ~ let's >> thank you. next speaker. hello, my name is gabrielle a bruce. thank you for having this hearing today ~. i'm not affiliated with -- i'm not here as an activist. i'm here just as a regular citizen. so, i am so glad to hear as a native and lifelong san franciscan about all of the alternatives to incarceration that the city has been pursuing and very, very successfully and i hope we do have bail reform. and i'm concerned many of the people we do have in our jail are awaiting trial simply because they can't come up with bail. that said, if we must have a jail, i do believe that it should be in san francisco. i have a serious concern about families having to go out to san bruno. i have a concern about our

volunteers. i work with -- i'm a volunteer with an organization that goes into the jails and i'm concerned about our volunteers having to go out to san bruno into -- away from the area where they live. i volunteer while we live in san francisco, we have to go out there. the families, many of the families do have to take public transportation and there's almost no public transportation out there. it is a long way from here if you've got to take the bus. let me tell you. the last stop is -- maybe you could call it bart, but really it's over there at san francisco state and it's a great hardship for people. we work to help parents, incarcerated parents stay in contact with their children through reading programs. and unfortunately it's hard for the children to visit their parents. we work so hard and the parents are working so hard to stay connected to their families and we need to do everything we

can. if we must have incarcerated people, to make things as easy as possible. thank you. ~ >> thank you. next speaker. hello, my name is kimberly roar balk. i don't have too much to say that hasn't already been said ~ regarding however people's concerns about families and family connectivity and access. it's my understanding that when san brewin owe was full there were shuttles going back and forth with no budgetary impact between the city and the facility. i venture to guess that the money that a new jail would cost, not to mention the bond money on san bruno that somebody mentioned, far exceeds the expense of actually transporting family members and/or attorneys to and from.

so, i just wanted to say that. jenny friedenbach from the coalition on homelessness stated that 27% of the people in the county jail are homeless. so, i think that if there was bail reform that would clear out about a third of the current population. finally, i agree with dorothy. one, it' frustrating here to be speaking against a jail that doesn't need to be built, where the other side is basically grasping for straws to justify a new jail ~. and i just wonder what's going on here. somebody has a financial interest in building a new jail and some politician who shall not be mentioned perhaps is backed by whatever party has an interest in building a new jail

and, you know, that's all i can figure out. but i'm against it. (applause) >> i have a couple more speakers. thank you. rachel less and lori nierny. i apologize if i mispronounce the name. please go ahead. and any member of the public who has not spoken would like to speak, please line up. hello. my name is marlene morgan and i'm speaking as a member of the community coalition around sutter cpmc. and there's a lot of similarities between what we're talking about today and talking about rebuilding hospitals in san francisco. we're talking about rebuilding beds. we're talking about closing facilities, centralizing facilities, consolidation. we haven't even gotten into the issue of land use, traffic, environmental issues. but when we first came before the board and before the planning commission eight years ago, the corporation that was

sponsoring a redesign of our health care in san francisco were very convinced that they had the answer, that they knew what the best outcome was going to be, they knew what the best practices were going to be, the best outcomes for health care. and in our eight years of push back as a community coalition, actually every single thing that we started with was a wrong assumption. what we've seen in the last period of time is a change of philosophy, a change in legislation, a change in funding, a change in technology that made it a bad idea to consolidate all health care services in one location and close all the other ones. so, we had a great victory because of this community coalition and the help of the board, i want to say, that were very involved. but we had a great mediated settlement between the mayor's office, the board, the community coalition, and the sponsor to get an outcome that created a really good -- good

future with san francisco health care. i really support chief still's proposal to do more research, to think carefully, to step back, to look around and to see if we can have a better outcome in the next 15 months. and then we can see what's going to work for us. thanks a lot. >> thank you very much. next speaker. good afternoon, supervisors. debby lerman. i am with the san francisco human services network and we are opposing the construction of the new jail. community based services and alternatives to incarceration are the most effective and the most cost-effective way to both prevent crime and reduce recidivism. rather than spending money on a new jail, the city could achieve savings and reduce the jail population to investment in substance abuse and mental health treatment reentry services, homeless serve is he, programs that reduce poverty,

violence prevention, work force development, education, supportive housing, and services for at-risk youth. in other words, investment in people. prevention and treatment approaches are better than institutionalization for a community as a whole and they are far more likely to increase public safety. and also community-based alternatives to incarceration are consistent with our city's values of compassion and belief in the potential of every individual. so, we urge you to make san francisco a leader in progressive criminal justice by rejecting the proposal to build another jail. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. [speaker not understood] and i am opposed to the jail. first i'd like to point out that nearly all of the public comments have been in

opposition to the jail, which is very telling of how the community feels about this plan. i'm also a graduate of san francisco state and i come from a working class family and i would not have been able to graduate from school if it were not for the financial aid that i received and graduated without any student loans or debt. and had i had a criminal family record, that would not have been possible and i would not have a degree right now. and, so, be i'm here to address the causes that our people are ending up in jail and helping them. i'd also want to talk a little bit about the transportation costs and the possibility of using san bruno. first, the estimates are much higher than they could possibly be and i urge you to investigate that data a little bit more.

also the talks about the buses for family members going to visit their loved ones. first, the shortest transportation would be for the family members to be in the house with their family and not breaking up the families. second of all, there's all this cost of [speaker not understood] project. what about wanting to be cheaper anyway for -- to improve the public transit if that was the issue that there's no buses. there seems to be a lot of money for other things. also i just wanted to say it doesn't make sense as a sheriff, kind of re-appropriating some of our language and talking about [speaker not understood] more communities of color and not keep it out of sight out of mind. >> thank you. but locking people up is ignoring them. >> thank you. next speaker.

good afternoon, supervisors and members of the community. i want to thank you for holding this hearing today. my name is barbara atard. i'm a police accountability consultant. i'm here representing the lawyers guild. i'm also a long-it time city employee, retired city employee. i worked during reentry for the sheriff's department many years ago with the office of citizen complaints dealing with police misconduct issues. i'll be brief. i think that the previous speakers have made excellent points. the inmate population is decreasing. building a new jail is counterproductive. what we should be spending money on is alternatives to incarceration, to solving the problems that have resulted in racial disparities in the jail population. some of these alternatives include restorative justice programs, mental health services, bail reform,

increased pretrial alternatives, solutions to homelessness and building affordable housing, gang abatement programs, drug programs, and educational support for at-risk youth and adults. in closing, i just want to emphasize that the only solution that makes sense for keeping families together is to keep families -- family members out of jail and prison. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. thank you, supervisors, and thank you for hearing me. my name is andrew mendes. i'm a formerly homeless resident of san francisco and like the district attorney said -- the public defender said, that people are in jail because they're poor. there's only two types of americans. there are americans who are -- who have access to health care and education based on their family's economic status and

there are those who are denied access to health care and education based on their family's economic status. when i became homeless it was essentially for the reason became homeless, mommy and daddy were not there to help. i think everybody knows if we build that prison who is going to go there and why? so, don't do it. a good -- my favorite supervisor said to me one time, if you only have a hammer, all of your problems will look like nails. so, just keep that in mind. and there are obviously ways to fix a problem, ways to not fix a problem. so, if i can it. ~ fix it. thanks. >> thank you very much. next speaker. (applause) good afternoon, my name is jeff caldwell. i'm a commander with san bruno police department.

i'd like to first off acknowledge the working relationship we've had with the san francisco sheriff's department for decades. as you may or may not be aware, the jail has been a fixture in the community of san bruno for in excess of well over 75 years. if i could echo what chief greg suhr said earlier this afternoon, adjacent to that facility is a bedroom community, it's residential primarily in addition to a community college. having that in mind, any change to that operation or that facility and/or rebuilding or anything down there, there is a potential for an impact to the members of our community as well as that school. therefore, i'd like to formally and respectfully request that the supervisors keep the city of san bruno abreast of the developments of this discussion down the road and months to come. thank you. >> thank you very much, officer. and we definitely will. thank you very much for your patience. next speaker. i'm