News - A federal monitor wants Santa Clara County held in contempt for dragging its feet on jail reforms.

SAN JOSE — A federal monitor overseeing Santa Clara County jail reforms is asking a judge to hold the county in contempt of court for its failure to ensure inmates have access to adequate medical care under a 2018 federal consent decree meant to transform substandard jail conditions. The provocative move by the Berkeley-based Prison Law Office comes after years of the county agreeing about the need to improve its deputy-to-inmate ratios — by either increasing custody staff or reducing the jail population — but not making meaningful progress, said Donald Specter, a senior staff attorney and former executive director for the law firm, which secured the reform agreement. “After meeting with the county over many years, we concluded that court intervention was the only way we were going to be able to force the county to comply with the agreements they made when they signed the consent decree in 2018,” Specter said in an interview. A motion filed earlier this week by Specter’s office calls for a federal judge in the Northern District of California to issue a contempt ruling against the county, and “impose for every month the county is not in compliance, a monthly fine (commensurate) with the savings the county enjoys through its noncompliance.” The consent decree was agreed to in the same federal court to settle a 2015 class-action inmate lawsuit filed by Specter’s firm alleging deplorable jail conditions, with a particular focus on access to mental health and health care. The suit was filed in the wake of a massive scandal where three jail deputies beat and killed Michael Tyree, a mentally ill inmate being held in the Main Jail on minor charges. Since then, the jails have experienced several more scandals revolving around in-custody deaths of mentally ill people, leading to multi-million dollar county settlements. Outrage over Tyree’s death spurred the formation of a blue-ribbon commission to conduct a top-down review of jail operations, leading to what Specter now characterizes as familiar-sounding commitments to reform. He has credited the county and sheriff’s office with making some noticeable progress on the attention paid to inmate conditions, but said the status quo remains largely intact. The chief concern detailed in the contempt motion revolves around jail staffing, stating that 100 more correctional deputies would need to be added to the jail system — composed of the Main Jail in San Jose and the Elmwood medium-security complex in Milpitas, run by the sheriff’s office — to ensure people in custody get timely medical attention. Specter writes in the motion that the deputy shortage means physical and mental health care treatment is often delayed since they must accompany medical personnel, a problem compounded by avoidable scheduling problems that stall appointments. “The county’s continued failure to resolve the understaffing problem means that patients do not have timely access to medical providers for evaluation and treatment of serious medical conditions, resulting in ‘delayed diagnosis and treatment, preventable pain and suffering, demonstrable harm to patients, and risk of harm to the jail population,’ ” the motion reads. County Counsel Tony LoPresti was conciliatory toward the federal monitor’s sentiment, but highlighted the difficulties of hiring amid overall law enforcement staffing shortages across the country. “We appreciate and share (the) plaintiffs’ desire to ensure appropriate staffing levels for the county’s jails,” LoPresti said in a statement to this news organization. “Like counties across the nation, we face significant challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified custodial staff. Even with these challenges, the county has taken concrete steps to create competitive compensation, improve retention, and expand our recruitment pipeline. “Although we disagree with and plan to oppose (the) plaintiffs’ motion, we will continue to work with urgency to ensure that we are providing safe and humane custodial settings.” Specter reiterated that the contempt motion was the result of years of hearing pledges to improve conditions, and that he can no longer overlook how people in Santa Clara County jail custody are still suffering similarly to how they were seven years ago. “Deputies are critical to providing access to health care for people in the jail,” he said. “There’s really no dispute between us and the county over the current situation. Both agree it impacts access to health care. The only thing we disagree on is the necessity of court intervention.” He added that it has been long understood between the two sides that absent a necessary hiring surge, the county can provide relief and fulfill the consent decree by reducing the jail population. The contempt motion mentions how during the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the county courts instituted zero-dollar bail to facilitate the release of people arrested on suspicion of nonviolent and largely low-level offenses, to control jail populations and the accompanying infection risk. That is the direction many community advocates want to see, rather than a new investment in law enforcement infrastructure. Raj Jayadev, director of the civil-rights and inmate-rights group Silicon Valley De-Bug, said he hopes the new litigation prompts a renewed focus on keeping people out of jail who are being held mostly for punitive, rather than safety, reasons. “We don’t think adding more resources or expanding sheriff’s staff is the solution. The solution is reducing the number of people who are held in the jail,” he said. “They’ve been given the pathways that are very common sense that have happened before in Santa Clara, they have just decided as a county to not move in that direction. Now maybe this is the incentive they needed.” Jayadev also said the contempt motion validates longstanding criticisms that the county has given mostly lip service to jail reforms, and called out the juxtaposition of the Prison Law Office’s condemnation of jail conditions with disputed county plans to widely equip deputies with stun guns. “That just last month they would entertain a sheriff proposal to arm officers in the jail with Tasers, supposedly for safety, while not even meeting minimum medical and health care needs, says it all.” This is a developing story. Check back for updates.