San Francisco’s sheriff and the city’s Chief Probation Officer have opposite ideas when it comes to the city needing a new jail.
Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi believes the city needs a new jail, whereas Chief Probation Officer Wendy Still told the San Francisco Chronicle she thinks it would be better to invest in an alternative to incarceration.
Despite the difference of opinion, the city is moving forward with a $632 million plan to rebuild a new jail adjacent to the Hall of Justice – where the local courts, police department and the offices of the district attorney and probation department are located.
San Francisco only uses around 60 percent of its jail space, even after Gov. Jerry Brown implemented his plan to reduce the state’s prison population by shifting the responsibility of how to deal with low-level offenders to county governments. San Francisco’s jail population did not dramatically grow after the shift, and 75 percent of its jail population is awaiting trial, according to the Chronicle report.
San Francisco should try to find ways to get people awaiting trial out of jail and work out a classification system that would help determine where to house detainees, according to Micaela Davis, a criminal justice and drug policy attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. Davis said Los Angeles County had a similar problem and found many detainees were improperly catergoized, according to the Chronicle report.
“Why, when San Francisco is doing such a good job creating alternatives to incarceration…are we investing money in beds?” Still asked the Chronicle.
