‘Constant lockdown’: Sonoma County jail detainees confined to cells 23 hours a day because of chronic staffing crisis

Adam Sansone has just 45 minutes a day to do everything he might want to do outside his cell at the Sonoma County jail — use the phone, take a shower, get hot water, order from the commissary, move around.

For the past eight months while he’s been incarcerated at the Main Adult Detention Facility, he’s regularly spent 23 hours or more of each day confined to his cell. On weekends, his unit might not be let out until 1 p.m. for the first time. Sometimes, they don’t get out at all.

“There's no excuse for what's going on,” Sansone said. “It’s constant lockdown. We’re lucky if we get out five hours a week.”

In his bare cell, Sansone has photos of his wife and daughter on the wall. “I look at those pictures all day,” he said. “It's just really bad, but I've been trying to stay strong.”

Sansone isn’t being punished for breaking any jail rules, and he’s not alone. Because of critical understaffing at the Sonoma County lockup, scores of detainees who are awaiting trial or serving sentences have been confined to their cells for prolonged periods in violation of local and state policies, a Press Democrat investigation found.

The conditions — one or two detainees in 7.5 feet-long by 10.6-feet-wide by 8.5-feet-high cells the vast majority of a day — amounts to solitary confinement, according to experts, who warn of the detrimental mental and physical health impacts as well as potential liability under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Neither the head of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Detention Division nor Sheriff Eddie Engram were available for an interview for this story. Engram oversaw the jail from 2020 until 2022.

Spokesperson Deputy Sheriff Robert Dillion said the ultimate goal of the Sheriff’s Office is “to maximize as much time out as possible for everyone in the facility.” In addition to “all of the hiring efforts to get more people in here and now,” he said, the agency is working on a contract to house inmates in another county jail.

‘Not supposed to be like torture’

One mother of a man who’s been in the county jail for about a year awaiting trial said her son has often been locked in his cell for 23 and a half hours a day. Being trapped like that along with his cellmate, he’s told her, “It’ll almost make you cry.” There’s no room to exercise, and in the time he’s out, he has to make tough choices between trying to get outside for sunlight, using the shower or jockeying with others to make a phone call, she said.

“You're in jail, but it’s not supposed to be like torture. They're trying to hold you so they can supposedly rehabilitate you,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition that her name not be used for fear of retaliation against her son.

“I’m not trying to say they’ve got to be extra nice to them or nothing like that. I’m just saying there’s certain basic human rights that a person is supposed to have … I don't feel like they’re taking out the time to get these men together for when they come back outside. They could be citizens that could do something.”

The Press Democrat spoke to 10 people incarcerated in the jail or with loved ones inside, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation. Data obtained through public records requests, jail letters and other interviews supported their accounts.

A sampling of weekly “out of cell activity” time audits provided by the Sheriff’s Office for four general population modules this year shows that dozens of people at times got as little as 30 minutes a day outside their cell, while some got none at all. In select weeks from February through June, average daily out-of-cell time for inmates in different groupings ranged from 23 minutes to two hours and 37 minutes, amounting to anywhere from under four hours to just over 18 hours of time outside their cells in a week.

One audit from early July showed detainees had more time out of their cells, but in total, the data reveal that the jail has repeatedly failed to meet the minimum standard set by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office’s own custody policy and California’s “Title 15 Minimum Standards for Local Detention Facilities.”

“That is solitary confinement by any definition,” said Margot Mendelson, legal director for the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit public-interest firm that litigates California prison and county jail conditions.

“Solitary confinement sounds like a big flashy word, but what it really means is that a person is not getting out to have pro-social experiences and they're locked in a cell for long periods of every day. We know that has profound and often permanent mental health implications for the people who are exposed to those conditions.”

A state bill, AB 280 or the California Mandela Act, introduced in January, would define confinement in California law as more than 17 hours per day in a cell. The legislation would ban extended cell confinement for some groups and limit it for everyone else to 15 consecutive days in some cases, with stringent documentation and tracking requirements.

It would also require at least four hours per day of out-of-cell programming and recreation. AB 280 passed the state Assembly and then Senate in September and will be up for a concurrence vote in 2024. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar legislative attempt last year, but New York recently passed a related law.

‘It starts taking a toll’

Calls to limit solitary confinement in its various forms have grown out of an increasing body of research linking conditions of confinement to short- and long-term psychological damage and physical health risks, a connection also recognized by international bodies like the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

Some of that is being felt in Sonoma County’s Main Adult Detention Facility.

“It can be overwhelming mentally and physically. It starts taking a toll on you,” said one man who’s spent months in the Sonoma County jail while waiting to find out if his case will proceed. “Getting out, it's a struggle from day to day.”

Dozens of people incarcerated at the Sonoma County facility have filed official grievances with the jail over the lack of time out of cells. Twenty-four complaints were recorded last year, according to records obtained from the Sheriff’s Office, and another 45 were filed through the beginning of August in 2023.

Pushed to a breaking point, some inmates have resorted to hunger strikes to draw attention to limited time outside cells and other issues like restricted visitation coming out of the pandemic.

“There's no clearer sign of a systemic crisis than that people are making that choice, so I think it really deserves attention,” said Mendelson, the Prison Law Office legal director.

In March, about 90 people went on a hunger strike that lasted as long as 10 days. About eight months earlier, in August 2022, 75 people initiated a strike. An Aug. 22 hunger strike incident report from the Sheriff’s Office five days into the strike noted “they wanted out of cell activity program to go back to normal operation, the kitchen workers were not able to take showers or have time to get hot water … and the module workers not being able to come out and clean.”

Working way understaffed

At issue, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, is understaffing. Without enough correctional workers, the jail has had to scale back on programming, out-of-cell time and visiting hours due to safety and security protocols.

When asked about departmental concerns over liability, Dillion said “the Sheriff’s Office is more concerned about the quality of life for the incarcerated people and getting them additional access to programming, recreational time and socialization.”

He noted that the facility passed a California Board of State and Community Corrections compliance inspection for minimum operating procedures in September.

Limiting time out of cells is “a last, last resort,” said Damian Evans, president of the Sonoma County Law Enforcement Association, the bargaining unit for more than 500 public safety employees, including correctional deputies and sergeants.

Like many other correctional facilities, the jail has had increasing difficulty hiring and retaining correctional staff, pushing workers into extreme and unsustainable working conditions. At the end of August, there were 45 vacancies and another 40 people out on injury leave, meaning a vacancy rate of 47%. As a result, correctional deputies faced 92 hours of mandatory overtime in September. That doesn’t include “early ins and holdovers” happening on a daily basis, according to Evans, where a worker might be called in early with a couple hours’ notice or have to work several hours extra into the next shift. In July and August, patrol deputies were brought in to help out.

“It has been an ongoing issue for many, many years in the jail, but since right around the pre-COVID period, it has accelerated at a pace that people haven't seen before. It's the worst that it's ever been there,” Evans said, adding that as mandatory overtime has gone up, so have injuries.

On top of concerns over employee health and welfare are inmate programs and services that are required by law, Evans said.

“They have families that need to come and visit, there's programming, there's counseling,” he said. “There’s all those things that need to be delivered, and you need staff that are able to do it that aren't working four 16-hour shifts every week.”

The vacancies, mandatory overtime, and mounting injury leave make hiring for the difficult and sometimes dangerous job both harder and even more pressing. “It’s a vicious circle,” said John Alden, director of the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach, or IOLERO, Sonoma County’s Sheriff’s Office oversight board.

Short staffing extends, too, to the jail’s contracted medical provider, Wellpath, which has drawn sharp criticism from inmates, IOLERO and jail medical workers. Wellpath has rapidly expanded to provide health care to the majority of California’s county jail systems since its 2018 founding. It faces more than 1,000 lawsuits and multiple federal investigations over alleged failures in health care delivery and violations of prisoners’ rights.

When the Board of Supervisors renewed Wellpath’s contract in 2021, worth roughly $63 million over five years, it came with enhanced transparency and oversight measures.

Still, last April, the National Union of Healthcare Workers raised grave concerns about deteriorating patient care as a result of Wellpath consistently staffing less than two-thirds of positions. And those behind bars continue to raise alarm bells about inadequate medical attention. Per Wellpath’s current contract, if the company fails to meet care standards, the county can issue fines or even terminate the agreement.

Sansone and his family have repeatedly complained about a lack of responsiveness to medical requests and concerns over medication provided for his epileptic episodes, one of which, Sansone said, landed him in the hospital and then a wheelchair.

“It’s scary … I don’t feel safe here,” Sansone said, adding he’s anxiously awaiting his pending transfer to prison, where he thinks he will get better treatment.

Ramping up recruitment

The Sheriff’s Office, like in many other counties, has been consistently ramping up recruitment efforts. For entry-level correctional deputy positions, salaries start at up to $44.15 an hour, according to job postings, and come with a $25,000 signing bonus paid over the first three years of service. Other incentives include relocation reimbursements up to $5,000 and advanced paid vacation and sick leave.

In Evans’ view, given the state of affairs and intense competition for a limited candidate pool, more is needed, pointing as an example to nearby counties that have made out-of-contract pay adjustments.

“There’s always been a struggle between hiring enough people and the fact that it’s expensive for the county to have these employees,” Alden said. "That puts every county in a tough bind where the marketplace is forcing them to pay more for these kinds of employees but also needing a lot of them, which makes it expensive.”

Detention accounts for almost 40% of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office’s $209.5 million budget.

Alden, the IOLERO director, credited the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and the Sheriff’s Office for recognizing a need to prioritize the issue. But, that may be little comfort to staff, detainees and their families suffering the consequences.

Alden said there’s little his agency can do to enforce the time-in-cell standards and policies.

“If the whole institution just doesn't have the resources to provide the 10 hours out of cell time, then they just can't,” Alden said. “As far as we can tell, right now, the entire institution is so short-staffed that nobody can make that goal. As long as that's the case, there’s really nobody to discipline. They just need to hire new staff as quickly as possible.”

Understaffing or overcrowding?

That’s not how everyone sees it, however.

Correctional understaffing and the cascading consequences for the incarcerated extend far beyond Sonoma County. Litigation over similar lockup conditions in San Francisco’s county jails is ongoing, with the head of the sheriff’s union and former sheriff voicing support for inmates’ demands for more outdoor and out-of-cell time. Mendelson of the Prison Law Office said the firm has roughly seven to 10 ongoing lawsuits against counties over conditions of confinement.

“Lack of out-of-cell time is a crisis across the state of California in county jails, and the reliance on solitary confinement to manage jail populations is a huge source of harm. It also inflicts massive legal violations across the state,” Mendelson said. “As jail populations continue to rise, and people stay for long periods of time in our county jails, the jails just have not risen to the challenge of providing constitutional conditions of confinement.”

With that in mind, some legal experts and advocates have identified a different root cause and solution.

“Understaffing is just a different way of saying overcrowding,” Mendelson said. “Jail population is not fixed. It's a reflection of what alternatives to incarceration are out in the community, and one way you know you’ve got too many people in that space is that you can't get them out of their cells because you can't even find the staffing to meet their needs.”

Advocates have pushed for community-based alternatives for people with mental health needs and substance abuse issues or looking at diversion for some pretrial detainees. The Main Adult Detention Facility currently houses 747 inmates. According to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office 2021-2022 Annual Report, 48% of the population had a mental health diagnosis, and 28% reported being homeless. Only 30% have been sentenced for a crime.

“We understand that the Sheriff’s Office does not currently have staffing to provide incarcerated people adequate time outside their cells,” said Brian Morris, who leads the Sonoma County Public Defender’s Office. “The humanitarian solution is simple: reduce the jail population to a number that the sheriff’s staff can supervise.”

County jails are locally funded and often nestled right in the heart of cities — the Main Adult Detention Facility sits just off Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa between court and county services buildings, the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center and an array of hotels, chain retail stores and quick-service restaurants. And yet, these facilities and what happens inside them have been frequently lambasted as shielded from public view and accountability. Critics say oversight and enforcement tools are lacking, even in comparison to prisons.

Jerry Threet, IOLERO’s director from 2016 to 2019, said overseeing the Sonoma County jail was difficult, even in his position of authority.

“These places are inside communities, are funded by communities and then what actually happens in there is completely inaccessible and opaque to the members of that community,” Mendelson said. “It's almost mind-boggling how much abuses can flourish in these environments without the knowledge of the person who works in the building next door.”

In September, there were two unrelated in-custody deaths at the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility. Investigations are ongoing.

“It makes me worried that he’s going to be one of those statistics on TV that you see. That’s what scares me,” said Deborah Hurley, Sansone’s mother.

“Every day, I'm worried about something like that. If it's not my son, it’s somebody else … Something’s wrong.”

“In Your Corner” is a column that puts watchdog reporting to work for the community. If you have a concern, a tip, or a hunch, you can reach “In Your Corner” Columnist Marisa Endicott at 707-521-5470 or marisa.endicott@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @InYourCornerTPD and Facebook @InYourCornerTPD.