How long does it take to build something?
In the case of the the Santa Barbara County Jail under construction in Santa Maria, at least eight years, maybe longer. Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown has touted the facility as the future savior of the county’s justice system woes since at least 2013.
Every malady afflicting the county’s decrepit Main Jail in South County will be nourished back to health when its famed North County partner opens its shiny, shipshape cell doors.
Food quality issues? New jail.
Unaccessible to inmates with disabilities? New jail.
Tight quarters? New jail.
Poor visibility for guards? New jail.
Increasing recidivism rates? New jail.
Need a new jail? New jail.
Looking for government funding? New jail.
Just wait! We’ll fix it all once our new jail is open. Promise!
And yet, here we are again. Pining away for the now $121 million facility to be spacious, open, and COVID-19 germ free. The Main Jail has 35 and counting COVID-19 cases stemming from an outbreak in its basement dorm, which the jail isn’t even supposed to be using right now because the conditions are so subpar—but due to social-distancing requirements, the Sheriff’s Office was left with no other options but to use it for inmate housing.
Even the attorneys who just settled a lawsuit with the county over the Main Jail’s conditions are placing their bets on the elusive facility’s grand opening. Disability Rights California lawyer Aaron Fischer said the new jail’s opening would reduce the cost of complying with the settlement reached in Murray v. County of Santa Barbara. And one of those conditions is, yes, closing those basement dormitories!
Those dorms were supposed to be shut down on Jan. 1, but Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Raquel Zick said the basement wouldn’t be closed until “it is safe to do so.” Which I totally get! We don’t need anymore jail inmates or the people who work with those inmates to get COVID-19. So the Sheriff’s Office is caught between a crappy basement and COVID-19.
Don’t worry, though, Fischer said he wasn’t going to run back to court and force the basement’s closure: “We’re trying to give them some flexibility because of the pandemic.”
“But we have told them for a long time, those units are tinderboxes for harm and for infectious disease spread,” he said.
Our favorite fantasy behind bars was slated to open in spring of 2019. Then, the fall of 2020. Now, maybe sometime in 2021. If we’re lucky. See, all you pro-government advocates out there, this is why we can’t have nice things!
And although the county’s Northern Branch Jail Project website states that construction was completed on Nov. 5, 2018, the facility is apparently still under construction, but is estimated to open in spring 2019. So could we maybe use our precious resources to update that website for the public please?
Fischer said he’d heard that the facility would be completed in April 2021 and possibly open by June 2021. We haven’t received either an affirmative or a negative from the Sheriff’s Office about when the fateful day will come. But it’s coming! Just be patient.
The Canary is also waiting on a new cage. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 11-18, 2021.
