The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office is officially reviving its jail ride program, which offers free cab rides to inmates released from jail late at night when public transportation is no longer an option.
The program’s new beginning comes nearly a year after the originally contracted taxi service, Rock Star Transportation, stopped doing business. Since then, the Sheriff’s Office has been working to find another cab company willing to contract with the Santa Barbara County Jail.
United Taxi, a locally run cab company, formally agreed to provide transportation services to former detainees recently, according to a Sheriff’s Office press release, and rides were available again on Oct. 23. United Taxi, according to Chief Custody Deputy Vincent Wasilweski, has an entirely bilingual staff of drivers, offers affordable prices, and provides vans compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act for any mobility-impaired detainees being released at night.
The company has been in business for six years and has eight taxis. United Taxi Owner Graeme Langley said in the release that he was excited to be helping the county.
While Santa Barbara County Jail gives free bus tokens to inmates released in the day, those released at night, when buses are no longer running, are often left without any way to get home. The jail is about 7 miles from downtown Santa Barbara, and nearly 60 miles from cities in North County, which currently lacks a jail of its own.
Now, United Taxi will offer rides to late-night releases from the jail to the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission, which has agreed to stay open late and take people on a walk-in basis. Rescue Mission President Rolf Geyling has said that the Rescue Mission’s goal is to get people with addictions into treatment and out of cyclical incarceration.
The program will be funded, as in the past, by the jail’s Inmate Welfare Fund—a percentage of money the jail keeps when an inmate buys something from the commissary.
“This program ensures that all discharged inmates,” Sheriff Bill Brown said in the release, “no matter what their financial means, have the opportunity to leave the jail in a safe and dignified manner.”
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 2, 2017.