The North County Jail houses up to 20 inmates that have been booked and held for various crimes in the Santa Maria Valley area. With Santa Barbara County facing severe budget cuts, Sheriff Brown made the decision to shut down the jail. The shut down of the North County Jail is scheduled to take place on June 27. According to Sheriff Brown, closing the jail and substation will save the county more than a million dollars each year.

On the downside of this decision, the Santa Maria and Guadalupe Police Departments will feel the financial blow of the jail’s closure. Officers will have to transport anyone arrested and booked in their jurisdictions to the main jail near Goleta in Santa Barbara, over 70 miles away.

Chief Dan Macagni of the Santa Maria Police Department said to Your Central Coast News, “Huge, it’s absolutely huge; the impact is not just to this agency but to the whole Santa Maria Valley. We don’t have the resources, we don’t have the money and the officers to take people off the street and transport every prisoner we arrest to Goleta.”

It would be possible to keep the North County Jail open if the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors will decide to allocate funds to the facility in their upcoming budget decision, set for Monday.

Final approval of the budget is up to Lavagnino and his fellow supervisors. They will try to shift around money to prevent shutting down the jail. If the only jail in Santa Maria is closed, deputies will have to transport the people they arrest to the main jail in Santa Barbara, leaving one less deputy to patrol the streets.

“We’re going to turn our police officers, it looks like, into cab drivers,” said 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino. Closing the jail is estimated to save $1.2 million, but transportation costs for taking inmates to the Santa Barbara jail have not been factored into that amount.

Sheriff’s deputies do not take the closure of the jail lightly, though they acknowledge the need for budget cuts.

“We’re used to being there for the public when they need us, and there might be a slower response due to some of the cuts that are coming,” said Commander Dominick Palera of the Santa Maria substation.

Additional cuts will include laying off 17 deputies. The cutting of the sheriff’s gang unit is also on the books at a time when gang violence is on the rise.

Even with overcrowding issues, other obstacles are still preventing Sheriff Brown from getting his new jail built. A $15 to $17 million annual budget is required for the operation of the jail, and while the state has already issued a generous amount, there is still $23.7 million needed to build the jail itself. In 2000, voters opposed the building of this new jail with a ballot total consisting of a two-to-one measure, under a lower proposed building cost.

This past Tuesday, Sheriff Brown proposed a fresh ballot to the Board of Supervisors that would require a one-half cent sales tax increase. Conducted in 2009, a poll issued to the people of Santa Barbara stated that 45 percent agreed that they would definitely or possibly be in favor of a ballot that would decrease overcrowding of jails. Later on, people were informed that inmates are released early due to overcrowding. Roughly 1,800 criminals a year are released, which caused a concern for public safety amongst the people, which then increased the poll from 45 percent to 59 percent. There was still a population of 9 percent who wanted more details prior to making a proper decision, but Brown’s reply to this was, “the time is now.”

Fortunately for Brown, he had a report done by a new Grand Jury and the Blue Ribbon Commission working on his side. The 10 year sales tax increase would allow enough money to cover the building cost of the 304-bed jail, and it’ll also allow for the annual cost to operate the jail. Nevertheless, this isn’t the only thing Sheriff Brown has in mind for the increase in sales tax. Not only does he plan to build a new jail, his hopes are that part of the money will also go to the prevention of crime. Brown stated, “We can best serve the public if we can prevent crimes from happening in the first place, or keep offenders from committing new crimes once they’ve been released from jail.”

At any given time, the jail’s population consists of 38 percent of gang members, 18 percent of homeless individuals, and roughly 85 percent of people with drug or alcohol abuse problems. By installing creative programs, Brown would like to offer help to offenders so they aren’t committed to an unfulfilled criminal lifestyle.

Furthermore, the new tax increase would also allow for more funding to law enforcement and fire security aid.  In any case, Sheriff Brown and the board will still need to guarantee that voters will want to stand behind this tax increase along with governmental jurisdiction and community groups with influence to reach the 66-percent favorability to proceed. The increase would take effect in July 2011.

A final ruling by Judge Thomas Anderle sustained a motion filed by the defendants that the lawsuit had no real legal basis.

The suit filed claimed that Brown, who entered in an agreement with Securus and Evercom, and Lt. Mark Mahurin, restricted and blocked free phone calls from the Santa Barbara jail, which inmates are entitled to.

Anderle stated that there was nothing in that contract which indicated that the County and Partners for a Safer America ever intended to benefit plaintiffs by ensuring them free phone calls from inmates.

“The contract does not even reference the telephones in the county detention facilities,” Anderle said.  He also stated, “There were no allegations in the complaint that the advertising signboards were not installed, or that Sheriff Brown somehow interfered with the signboards.”

Sheriff Brown did mention that there are some issues with the phones in the jails not working properly and said the county is working on repairing them through the vendor.  To claim that the county is trying to make money by messing with the phones is “ridiculous”, Brown said.

The stabbing left the victim with serious injuries that required a hospital visit and stitches. It also resulted in a facility-wide weekend lockdown for the rest of the inmates. Authorities do not know who was behind the stabbing or why it occurred. They have not recovered the weapon.

During the weekend lockdown, the entire jail was searched for 14 hours on both days. Jailors also conducted inmate strip searches. They found a variety of makeshift weapons, but not the one used in the stabbing.

The number of assaults in this jail has remained pretty consistent over the years, but according to department spokesperson Drew Sugars, their severity is on the rise. This is due to the type of individual incarcerated in recent years and the jail’s overcrowding – a problem rampant in the California penal system. Due to new release policies many misdemeanor defendants are being set free, leaving the jails full of inmates who are serving time for serious offenses, many of them repeat offenders. Sadly, around 10 percent of the jail’s population, which translates into 1000s of prisoners state-wide, are violent offenders currently facing murder or attempted murder charges.

Securus Technologies and Evercom Systems, companies that provide the Santa Barbara jail phone systems, have also been named in the suit. In May of 2007, Brown entered into an agreement with these two companies that allowed him to monitor, control, record, end and block phone calls made from the jail whenever he chose. Evercom paid his department a “signing bonus” of $80,000 in addition to giving it 50 percent of the money the collect calls brought in.

The bondsmen also say that the Sheriff’s Lt. Mark Mahurin willingly aided Brown in tampering with these free phone calls from the jail and that for three years, they also told new arrestees not to use the bondsmen’s services. Mahurin, according to the bondsmen, intended to increase the commissions his department received, and to increase the jail population, so that Sheriff Brown could then ask for funds to build a new jail!

Attorneys representing Brown’s office maintain that the plaintiffs’ allegations are “a scattered attempt to hold the county liable for an unsubstantiated decline in business.” They also say the bondsmen plaintiffs failed to list any actions by Brown and his cohorts that constitute a legal duty or a breach of duty.

When you think of Santa Barbara you probably think of life enchanted by the Pacific Ocean… a lovely walk down State Street, a visit to the zoo, great food, college students at Isla Vista… As bondsmen, when we think of Santa Barbara along with all of the beauty the County has to offer, we think of the Santa Barbara jail system.

Greg Rynerson Bail Bonds continues with the second in our series on California jails: Inside the Santa Barbara County Jails. Here we will let you in on

• Inmate Processing
• Santa Barbara Jail Operations
• Rehabilitation
• Overcrowding and Recidivism

Is there a jail you’d like to know more about? Let us know. We’ll get you “Inside” (or, if you need we’ll get you out!).