Santa Rita Jail making 'excellent strides' after years of troubles

DUBLIN, Calif. - Santa Rita Jail once earned the headline "The Most Dangerous Place in Alameda County."

Santa Rita Jail's notorious reputation

The backstory:

The notorious reputation, in part, came after a woman gave birth in a cell in 2017 and after KTVU analyzed data in 2019 showing Santa Rita Jail had the highest number of in-custody deaths in all of Northern California. 

Plus, over the last decade, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office spent more than $30 million on settling wrongful death lawsuits, including the most recent payout of $7 million in 2024 – the highest countywide – to the family of Maurice Monk, an Oakland man who lay languishing in his cell for days before anyone noticed he was dead. 

Positive changes

Now, in 2025, Santa Rita Jail seems to be emerging from this shadow, making reforms in the areas of mental health and the number of people dying behind bars. 

The positive changes are a result of a combination of factors, including individual lawsuits, a court-mandated "consent decree," reporting that's kept these issues in the public eye, a smaller jail population, and a new sheriff who was elected in 2022.

"The facility had a culture where people just came here," Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez said on a two-hour tour of the jail this week.  "We gave people the bare minimum and then somehow we have this expectation that they're going to be law-abiding individuals with no tools and with nothing.  So it's really changing the way we treat people." 

Some of those changes include a reduced population in the most restrictive housing units, partnering with the Julliard School in New York and the Laborers Local 304 to provide the incarcerated population with musical education and apprentice training and establishing connections with Off the Streets Ministries to provide housing when people are let out of jail. 

Other positive changes are smaller, but also meaningful, and include a new idea to offer pizza for good behavior and a mural of hearts and female goddesses to spruce up the jail's OB-GYN clinic. 

"It appears they're making strides," said Adante Pointer, a civil rights attorney who represented the Monk family and many others who have sued the jail alleging poor treatment and death.  "But they had to be dragged kicking and screaming. We're only here because people have been hyper-vigilant about holding the jail accountable. We're only here because they've been an abject failure." 

Attorney Kara Janssen, said when her firm, Rosen, Bien, Galvan and Grunfeld in San Francisco, sued Alameda County in a class-action 2018 suit over its treatment of those who suffer from mental illness, Santa Rita Jail "was a pretty terrible place." 

"I would see people who were in the mental health unit and Housing Unit 9 who were clearly psychotic, who were held in restrictive housing for months and months who had not seen the sun for that whole time," she said. "People were being held for days in these safety cells that had no sink, no toilets, no bed. And so you go to the bathroom, and you eat on the floor with your hands, and you sleep there."

Not an ‘F’ anymore

What they're saying:

At that time, when Sheriff Gregory Ahern was in charge, Janssen gave the jail a failing mark. 

"I think they're not at an F anymore," Janssen said. "You know, they're passing. If they can keep this momentum going, they may be able to get to an A, but they're not there yet."

But now that Sanchez has been in charge for the last two years, which coincides with the six-year consent decree, Janssen said there are improvements, including how they classify people coming into the jail, properly figuring out if these people should be sent to maximum or medium security areas, or if they need special mental health areas. 

The consent-decree mandated that 183 reforms be met. 

At last count, 59 of those were in "substantial compliance" and 115 in "partial compliance." 

Janssen said that the jail has "drastically reduced" the number of people being held in solitary confinement, which the jail calls restrictive housing. 

And the jail rarely, if ever, uses safety cells.

On a tour this week, there were only 28 people in restrictive housing, compared to when Sanchez took office, when there were 113 – a 78% reduction. 

The number of deaths at the jail has also dropped. 

Last year, three people died in custody, the lowest number since 2014, when there was a high of 10 deaths. 

"Holding people in their cells all the time was causing suicides, overdoses and other types of deaths," Janssen said. "Those deaths have dropped." 

A consent decree is the equivalent of having outside oversight; in this case it's overseen by U.S. District Court Judge Nathaneal Cousins, and is scheduled to end on Feb. 7, 2028. 

The decree, like a legal settlement, was signed between the county and Janssen's firm, in a case known as Babu v. Ahern, which stemmed from allegations that the jail overused solitary confinement, did not have adequate suicide prevention and mental health services, and did not let incarcerated people have enough out-of-cell time. 

Though the sheriff's office first fought the court oversight, now, employees say it was for the good. 

"The consent decree helped us," Capt. Justin Miguell said. "It made us better." 

Tour of Santa Rita Jail 

Dig deeper:

On a recent tour of the jail, Sanchez countered the grade that Janssen assigned. 

"I'd give us a good B+," she said. "But you also have to look at the effort."

What Sanchez has been working on – and achieving by most accounts – is a culture shift. 

She firmly believes that those behind bars must be treated well, as should her staff, which is why she's empowered her deputies to come up with ideas on how to break up fights – like buying the men in Housing Unit 9 Costco pizza if they behave well – and filling the employee dining hall with better food, like free smoothies and frozen yogurt. 

Another major shift is convening daily "huddles," where deputies and behavioral health workers meet together to figure out what's best for the incarcerated population, who might be having a hard time. They also brainstorm on de-escalation techniques that seem to work best, and those that don't. 

And if a deputy in uniform is intimidating someone, Sanchez said a mental health clinician will be called in instead. 

"We didn't communicate well, everyone operated in their own silos," Sanchez said. "We were doing our job. We didn't care what behavioral health was doing as long as they had a presence. That's not the case anymore."

She also said that deputies are now trained to be more patient, and if excessive force is used, there will be consequences. 

"We used to take action much more swiftly," she said. "And sometimes used sort of force that was applied in order for us to get back on schedule. Now we just ‘go with it.’ We want to make sure the individual who is having a moment of a crisis has someone to talk to and talk them through it."

This shift is a "team effort," Sanchez said. "We're moving away from by ‘any means possible.’ " 

She also brought in new staff, such as Deputy Michael Shaffer, who came up with the pizza idea and who many credit as a calm negotiator.  

"She really listens," Sgt. Roberto Morales said of the sheriff. "And she asks everybody what they think, from the top on down."

As another example, a sergeant came up with a way to re-organize the work schedule, reducing the reliance on overtime, Morales said.

Sanchez had several questions, and ultimately ended up adopting that plan because it made better sense, Morales added. 

Another new idea came from the OB-GYN nurse, Sadaf Possani, who thought it would be nice to brighten up the jail walls in the clinic for their pregnant patients.

How about some murals in the waiting room?

Sanchez said OK. 

And so, three incarcerated men painted the walls, pink and green and blue, to welcome the women in. 

Plus, Sanchez decided to move the roughly 115 women at the jail, which holds a total of roughly 1,500 people, into a building that has a better setup for classrooms.

In fact, musicians from the Julliard School came by this month to perform for the women and teach them about composing. 

And on a larger scale, Sanchez has been working hard to partner with trade unions and homeless shelters to provide people with jobs and shelter when they are released. 

These programs are about a year old apiece and are seeing some success, although a relatively small number of incarcerated people are able to get into these coveted programs. 

"They can get a job right when they walk out the door," Sanchez said. "And if they don't have a ride, our staff will give them a ride. It's my job to build in training so that they can go out and get a living wage and don't come back into custody." 

'Excellent strides' 

Sanchez's sentiments are echoed by the reports submitted by court-appointed monitors to the federal judge. 

In November 2024, Carolina Montoya, an expert in corrections and mental health, told the court that she found "significant improvements and advancements" toward compliance with the reforms ordered by the court, specifically that the jail is developing a better mental health services system. 

In the same month, another consultant, Terri McDonald, said she believes the sheriff has made "excellent strides" in improving the systems at the jail, which includes improving the culture. 

In fact, Sanchez believes that things are going so well at Santa Rita Jail, that county attorneys in December 2024 asked the judge if they could end parts of the six-year consent decree early. 

The other side:

There are still challenges ahead.

The consultants noted that there is still a dearth of employees working in the jail, too much reliance on force to de-escalate situations, too little out-of-cell time and structured activities, inadequate technology and the lack of an ombudsperson or advisory committee. 

The sheriff agreed that staffing the jail is a major challenge and, because there are construction projects that are ongoing – such as basketball courts and an outdoor recreational yard on the men's side – many incarcerated people aren't getting enough out-of-cell time.

The jail was built in the 1970s as a mass lock-up center, and reimagining the physical space to provide job training and classes has been tricky. 

Sanchez said she hoped those projects would be done by summer. 

Will it last? 

What's next:

While Janssen is pleased with what she's seeing at the jail, she's concerned that this positive trajectory might not last if Santa Rita Jail's population dramatically increases.

Currently, there are 1,500 people incarcerated at Santa Rita Jail. Six years ago, there were roughly 3,500. 

Janssen worried that more people, especially those with psychiatric issues, will cause more problems at the jail. And she wondered how the new Alameda County District Attorney would play into this situation if she begins charging more people with crimes and ending diversion programs. 

Sanchez said she's planning ahead to prepare for a possible influx of more people, coming up with ideas on more training and behavioral health programs, for example.

But Janssen isn't so sure. 

"That's my biggest concern right now," Janssen said. "I'm seeing a lot of positive progress at the jail, but that is dependent upon the low population. If that goes up, I don't know that they will be able to maintain this." 

Sanchez said she has been preparing for the future, coming up with game plans if the population of Santa Rita Jail grows. 

She is already partnering with more job sites and coming up with meaningful sentencing programs to rehabilitate and train people in jail so that they're employable when they get out. 

And despite the challenges, Sanchez said she believes she can keep the positive momentum going. 

"Maybe people are looking for perfection," Sanchez said. "We'll never be perfect. And I think that people expect us to be perfect, which is unrealistic." 

 

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