Sheriff to update San Diego County supervisors on jail reforms, upgrades and other plans

SAN DIEGO — Nearly nine months ago, Sheriff Kelly Martinez stood before the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and presented a wish list of improvements needed across the seven jails she oversees.

The presentation included a host of proposed new construction and upgrades but lacked any specific request for new money.

Instead, Martinez said a replacement for the decades-old Vista Detention Facility would cost almost $1 billion if the work began right away, and tens of millions of dollars more for each year of delay.

The other jails needed renovations that would cost $300 million or more, she said. The Sheriff’s Office would also need more employees to better protect people in custody and to carry out new responsibilities, Martinez added.

“We must make decisions soon, because the costs will continue to escalate,” the sheriff told supervisors in December. “This is not just a health issue; it’s a human dignity issue.”

Martinez will return to the board this Tuesday to update supervisors on the aging jails that house some 4,000 people any given day. And once again, she is not requesting any additional funding outside her $1.3 billion budget.

“The Sheriff’s Office has pursued a comprehensive approach to strengthening jail operations, modernizing aging infrastructure, supporting its workforce and achieving better outcomes for individuals in custody,” she said in her letter to the board.

“This focus and determination reflect a shared commitment to building a safer, healthier and more effective detention system,” she said.

Martinez was sworn in as the 31st sheriff of San Diego County in January 2023, as the office was confronting a litany of challenges beyond its declining jail infrastructure.

The county continues to defend a class-action lawsuit filed by people who have spent time in its jails over conditions inside them, though several of the claims have already been settled. County lawyers also are fighting more than a dozen lawsuits filed by family members of people who have died in sheriff’s custody.

In her letter to supervisors, Martinez said she plans to continue implementing reforms aimed at improving practices and services in the jails, including stronger mental-health treatment. She also plans to keep fighting to reduce drug-smuggling into jails and to help people who arrive in custody addicted to drugs.

“The Sheriff’s Office initiatives collectively promote more equitable access to care and improved outcomes for individuals who come into San Diego County jails, many of whom are underserved,” Martinez said.

Martinez also said her office remains committed to securing accreditation from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, a nonprofit organization that sets nationwide standards for medical and mental health services in prisons and jails.

“It is an impartial and unbiased expert organization dedicated to recognizing and fostering improvements to the field of correctional healthcare,” she told the board.

In November, the Sheriff’s Office hired an arm of the commission to survey each county jail and produce a renovation plan to help secure accreditation. The consultants plan to visit the Las Colinas women’s jail in Santee as part of that jail’s June application.

“Upon earning the NCCHC accreditation of Las Colinas Detention and Reentry Facility, the Sheriff’s Office will seek the independent accreditation of the other six facilities,” the sheriff said.

Martinez did not disclose the cost of the consultation work.

Former sheriff William Gore hired the same entity to evaluate San Diego County jails in 2017. He said then that gaining national accreditation was a primary objective for his office.

But the $100,000 study went largely unimplemented, because experts said most of the county jails required major renovations in order to qualify.

The Las Colinas jail may well win accreditation, because it was rebuilt just over 10 years ago. But the other facilities are all older and need millions of dollars worth of upgrades and repairs.

The jail in Vista is the county’s oldest. It is so dilapidated that whole sections of the facility are not usable because locks, plumbing and other basics do not work properly, the Sheriff’s Office said at community meetings earlier this year.

Paying for new jails has always been challenging for San Diego County.

Martinez has been reluctant to submit a formal funding request to the Board of Supervisors for new facilities, but she did say last December that a replacement jail in Vista would cost at least some $950 million.

She also said her other facilities need approximately $289 million in renovations.

Local governments generally finance such capital projects through bonds. During the meeting in December, staff told supervisors that the county generally must pay about $6 million for every $100 million it borrows.

“That’s a pretty sizable expenditure on deferred maintenance,” board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer said then about the cost of a new jail in Vista. “But the real expense is $60 million a year — not $1 billion — for the new jail.”

San Diego County jails have faced years of high mortality rates and lawsuits related to those deaths. In recent years alone, the supervisors have approved tens of millions of dollars in settlements with families of people who died in sheriff’s custody.

In the three and half years since Martinez took office, the number of jail deaths has dropped sharply from the deadliest years on Gore’s watch. Even so, 10 people died in custody last year, and six more have died so far this year.

According to the sheriff, many of the fatalities are in some way the result of the jails’ dated infrastructure, meaning triple bunks in too many cells, little room for individual counseling and other features that were common in the past but are no longer appropriate for 21st century corrections. She said each of the facilities except Las Colinas have effectively reached the end of their expected lifespan.

The Board of Supervisors meets Tuesday at 9 a.m.