Sonoma County Jail inmates staying longer

Charr Treadway hadn’t seen trees or watched a sunset in more than two years when a fellow inmate at the Sonoma County Jail came to her one day bearing a gift.

It was a clump of fresh grass, snatched from the ground outside the Santa Rosa facility during a kitchen trash run.

Treadway, a 42-year-old Petaluma mother of three serving time for forgery, theft and drug possession, held it to her face and cried.

In all her many months of incarceration she almost forgot what it was like beyond the jail walls.

“I hadn’t touched grass in so long,” recalled Treadway, released in December after almost three years. “I cried so hard. You have no idea how hard it is to be in there so long.”

Treadway is among thousands statewide to serve prison sentences in the county jail under Gov. Jerry Brown’s historic legislation - known as realignment - that shifted supervision of less-serious criminals from the state to counties.

A result is that places like Sonoma County’s Main Adult Detention Center - designed in the late 1980s for maximum incarceration periods of no more than one year - are now holding some inmates for five years or longer.

That’s boosted the average stay in the jail and the less-restrictive “honor farm” near the county airport by 87 percent over the past five years, jumping from 22 days in 2010 to just over 41 days last year.

At the same time, the population has risen 13 to 15 percent, and some inmates have been shipped to less-crowded facilities in other counties. On Friday, there were 766 inmates in the main jail, 234 at the honor farm and 38 in other counties.

Jail officials said they are adjusting to the new responsibilities by offering a multitude of educational and rehabilitative programs aimed at helping inmates obtain GEDs or get off drugs.

And like state prison, they allow some offenders to learn job skills by working in the jail kitchen and performing other tasks.

But the longer lockup periods, coupled with the arrival of hardened criminals who normally would have gone to state prison, are creating problems.

Inmate-on-inmate assaults rose 48 percent following the advent of realignment, increasing from 41 in 2011 to 61 in 2014, and there are more drugs than ever being smuggled into the jail, said Capt. Patti Bennett, chief of county detention.

An inmate population comprised of about 20 percent would-be state prisoners is straining the resources of the understaffed jail, creating a hazardous work environment and threatening inmate safety.

“It’s a lot more challenging now than before realignment,” said jail Lt. Dave House as he led a tour through the jail’s high-security wing.

The state is reimbursing the county for its increased costs to the tune of about $10 million a year, or about a fifth of the jail’s $54 million budget. The state money is being used in part to pay for more correctional officers and programs like the day reporting center, which helps ex-convicts make the transition from prison to outside life. It also covers things like electronic monitoring bracelets that allow minor offenders to stay out of jail.

Robert Ochs, the county’s chief probation officer and head of the local realignment oversight committee, said the new system is an improvement for inmates because they can remain closer to loved ones and benefit from enhanced services. Also, he said, some sentences are actually shorter than they would have been if they were served in prison.

“In some respects, they are actually getting it better now than before,” Ochs said. “Number one, they are local. It’s easier for families. And we provide programming for these folks. They didn’t get much in state prison.”

However, it’s unclear whether the governor’s effort to reduce prison overcrowding is good for counties or public safety. Some police agencies report property crimes are on the rise, with criminals serving shorter sentences for some crimes.

And some inmates say they are not well-served. Treadway, who sued the county because she was not allowed to go to the honor farm, said women were kept locked in their cells most of the day when she arrived in 2012.

Fellow inmates were over-medicated, causing them to sleep all the time, and they gained weight because of a starchy diet with little chance to exercise, she said.

Unlike many state prisons, including San Quentin, the main county jail has no athletic fields or outdoor yards, except for the high-walled, roofless spaces about half the size of a basketball court where they can shoot hoops or look straight up and catch a glimpse of blue sky.

And there are no conjugal visits.

Spending 34 months confined to one of the jail’s cramped modules was grueling, Treadway said.

“I would have preferred to do my time in state prison,” said Treadway, who lost her gender discrimination suit after a judge ruled women received equal treatment in the jail.

Advocates of overhauling the state’s prison system said the trouble with realignment is that it shifted inmates from overcrowded prisons to counties but didn’t change sentencing. For the first time, offenders were serving double-digit jail terms.

“It didn’t change the actual sentence,” said Elizabeth Siggins, a program director for Californians for Safety and Justice. “It just changed where they did them. It reduced the prison population but added pressure to counties.”

Two measures that followed realignment relieved some pressure. Proposition 36 eased punishments for those convicted of a third serious “strike” offense, while Proposition 47 reduced a handful of mostly drug and theft-related felonies to misdemeanors.

Almost 1,200 convicted felons in Sonoma County applied for sentence reductions under Proposition 47 from Nov. 5, the day after the law went into effect, to March 1. Court officials couldn’t say how many were released from jail.

Also, judges under realignment are handing down “split sentences” in which defendants serve part of their time out of custody under supervision of probation officers.

That has freed some jail space but hasn’t reduced the average time because the jail now has a higher percentage of inmates serving what amount to prison sentences.

An Oakley woman convicted of a rash of thefts holds the distinction of serving the longest current sentence. Denise Hankins received 15 years under a split sentence requiring her to be in custody for 10 years. On Thursday, Mohannad Halaweh, 20, of Rohnert Park received a split sentence of more than 14 years for credit card fraud, more than nine of which must be served in jail.

Up to 75 percent of the sentences handed down under the new law are split sentences. That’s a good thing, Ochs said, because inmates who in the past would have been released from prison with little oversight will now be placed under local supervision, allowing better integration back to society while reducing the likelihood of reoffending.

Realignment also has enabled the county to pay for two key initiatives envisioned in its criminal justice master plan - a day reporting center for recently released criminals and a pretrial risk evaluation program that allows defendants to remain free while they resolve their cases.

While other counties are spending money on new jail construction to incarcerate more people, Sonoma County is investing in programs to stop a revolving door of crime, Ochs said.

“That’s the hope,” Ochs said. “It’s all about trying to do what the research says are the best practices to stop recidivism.”

Still, some in law enforcement are concerned realignment goes too easy on people who commit property crimes such as embezzlement and fraud, sentencing them to jail instead of prison.

District Attorney Jill Ravitch said a cookie-cutter approach takes sentencing discretion away from prosecutors and the courts.

But Ravitch said she agrees with the emphasis on rehabilitation over incarceration and all that it entails, including job training and providing housing, to end the criminal cycle.

“You can’t just lock people up and expect they will get out and be good, productive people,” Ravitch said. “We need to be smarter about how we deal with the situation. Whether we’re making the right choices is yet to be determined.”

You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ppayne.