Local Politics: Decarcerating and the County Budget

A request for public comment from Decarcerate Sacramento:

Send Emails before June 9th: BoardClerk@saccounty.net

*Click here to send automated email!

Find your supervisor: https://www.saccounty.net/SupervisorLookUp/Pages/default.aspx

• Supervisor Don Nottoli: NottoliD@saccounty.net
• Supervisor Phil Serna: SupervisorSerna@Saccounty.net
• Supervisor Patrick Kennedy: SupervisorKennedy@saccounty.net
• Supervisor Rich Desmond: Richdesmond@saccounty.net
• Supervisor Sue Frost: SupervisorFrost@saccounty.net

Sacramento County’s Proposed Budget: https://bdm.saccounty.net/FY2021-22BudgetInformation/Pages/default.aspx

Decarcerate Sacramento's Budget Hearing toolkit:
https://bit.ly/BUDGET69

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Sample Email Script: Public Comment on Item #3 - June 9th

Dear Board of Supervisors,

My name is ____ and I live in ____. [the more personal you make your letter the better!]

First and foremost, I want to highlight that the Public Safety & Justice Agency in its current proposed form does not include meaningful community involvement or health and racial equity experts. For years now, a community-led movement has been growing to demand better coordination and accountability on Mays consent decree compliance and jail population reduction. The agency as proposed does not sufficiently center impacted communities or public health needs. We support Decarcerate Sacramento's ongoing efforts to work with the County on sustainable solutions, and their proposal to create a committee with balanced representation of county employees and community members to create a Depopulation Plan together and work to improve jail conditions.

We recommend that the Board make a commitment that builds on your resolution that acknowledges Racism as a Public Health Crisis. This resolution should frame your process around building a plan that decreases jail populations, acknowledging what county department leaders have stated publicly: that racism is “baked into” the criminal justice system. To combat the inherent racism in this system, you must include impacted community members and groups at the decision-making table, and hire decision-makers who use a racial equity approach.

The assumption that Probation’s pretrial program is an appropriate strategy to decrease jail populations is concerning and exactly why you need community voices at the table. A true alternative to incarceration does not involve criminalization and surveillance that controls, punishes, and sets people up to fail—especially for individuals in the pretrial stage who have a constitutional right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

I strongly oppose the allocation of $5 Million to the “Probation Monitored Pretrial Release Program.” Budget committees of both houses of the state legislature just voted to stop the funding of these probation-led pretrial programs. Continuing this program goes against the will of California voters, who rejected Prop 25 last fall. Voters in 13 of 16 counties (81%) who had existing probation-led pretrial programs, including Sacramento County, rejected Prop 25, stating they did not want an expansion of SB10 probation-led pretrial programs and biased risk assessment tools.

Probation has yet to publish any racial demographic data on their pilot program, which they promised publicly on October 22nd, 2019. Expanding this program’s funding without data and transparency is a public safety and budgetary concern. It is fiscally irresponsible to expand pilots that lack a proven track record of effectiveness, quality review, and longer-term benefit. What does have a proven track record of success are community-based pretrial service models, like San Francisco and Santa Clara. Funding innovative, community-based pretrial service models that uphold the presumption of innocence will increase cost-savings from jail population reductions while ensuring public safety.

We are demanding a FY21-22 budget that invests in #CareNotCages. The budget that your staff is proposing does not reflect the values that our community holds, or this Board’s stated commitment to reducing the jail population. The Sheriff, Probation, and DA combined requested almost $17M in funding and over 80 positions, and they were granted the majority of what they requested ($13M and 68 positions). Can the same be said for the Public Defender’s Office, which is currently funded at a 1:4 ratio compared to the District Attorney? This is largely a status-quo budget that invests in harmful cycles of poverty and criminalization when we urgently need funding for health and human services, housing, community-based care and diversion. Public safety starts with meeting basic human needs for all in our community.

From a fiscal perspective, FY18-19 budget documents signaled an ongoing emergency: “It would be prudent over the next few years to focus on reducing costs and building reserves.” Instead, this budget continues to double down on cost-depleting departments like the Sheriff’s which have consistently shown to be a low yield county investment (i.e., squalid jail conditions leading to the Mays consent decree; revolving door of jail-homelessness; nearly $172/person/night cost). This high frequency Sheriff-DA-Jail-Probation contact further impoverishes impacted persons, their families and neighborhoods, causing additional strain to Human Assistance and Health Services, which are both facing budget cuts this year.

If public safety is truly the goal, then the majority of allocations will move toward equity and data-informed outcomes for supporting public safety by reducing the disparities in the social determinants of health.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

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HELL NO‼️

Budget Cuts We Oppose:

• The County is Defunding of Human Assistance Aid Payments by over $34 Million ($15M of Net County Costs)

  • “Due to projected decline in assistance loads”

  • Our community is most definitely in need of aid assistance. During the pandemic, accessing county aid became nearly impossible for many struggling families (with closing offices and long phone lines). So the number of people who got assistance this year does not necessarily reflect the number of people who are in need.

  • The Department of Human Assistance needs more funding for an outreach/accessibility plan to increase their aid distribution and ensure that everyone in our community is able to get their basic needs met

  • The County is really trying to defund aid payments during one of the worst economic crises we’ve ever seen.

• The overall budget for Emergency Services is proposed to decrease by $5 Million

• The overall budget for Economic Development is proposed to decrease by $26 Million

Budget Growth We Oppose:

• $16.2 Million Overall Budget increase for Sheriff’s Department (⬆️ $7.5 Million ⬆️)

• $5.9 Million for 30 new Sheriff’s deputies

  • $1.9 Million for 37 new Probation staff for Department of Juvenile Justice (Youth Incarceration) Realignment

  • $5 Million for “Probation Monitored Pre-trial Release Program”

  • There are currently 20,000 people on Probation in Sacramento County!

  • Both houses of state legislature just voted NO on $140 million expansion of these Probation programs

  • Probation’s Pretrial Program goes against the will of California voters.

  • Expanding pretrial pilot funding without data and transparency is a public safety and budgetary concern.

  • The presumption of innocence is a basic right provided by our Constitution. The County's proposed expansion of Probation’s pretrial pilot program is a threat to this fundamental constitutional right.

  • Probation failed to deliver on a basic promise: to fund community-based organizations.

  • Probation Department lies in public--NEVER published any data on race, or any demographics, two years after this pilot program started.

  • Probation is a driver of Mass (Re)Incarceration. Any missteps land us back inside.

  • Probation is working hard to position itself as a leader in “alternatives,” but in reality their practices hugely expand the net of who can be surveilled and detained.

  • Probation’s Pretrial Services costs $1 for every six cents for the Public Defenders’ Pretrial Support Program. And, the County isn’t even paying for the Public Defender’s Program. It’s funded by a grant.

  • The proposed new Management Analyst using $189,000 of AB109 Realignment funds. This person should work with but independently from the Criminal Justice cabinet, better yet under the Public Health Department, and have the following skills:

    • Understanding of social determinants of health

    • Demonstrated history of collaboratively engaging and doing systems change work with impacted communities

    • Racial, gender, economic justice, trauma-informed and restorative justice lens

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HELL YES‼️

Budget Growth We Support:

• $12 Million for Alternative Emergency Response to Persons Experiencing Mental Health Crises (reallocated directly from the existing Sheriff’s Department budget)

• $1.2 Million for MORE Public Defenders--requesting 6 new positions but DENIED by County CEO. The DA has 401 employees (prosecutors) and only 140 Public Defender employees (who work to defend people accused of crimes).

• $3.9 Million for Park Construction for ADA accessibility

• $7.4 Million for “Homeless Encampment Initiative" must not involve police at all!

Our Funding Demands: (Feel free to choose 1 or 2 as good talking points!)

1. Redirect at least 65% (or $32 Million) of AB109 Realignment funds to community based reentry programs that serve at least 2,000 people per year and prevention services, outside of the Sheriff or Probation Departments. Community-based mental health out-patient treatment services outside of a jail/law-enforcement setting should be prioritized. An audit of counties’ use of past AB109 funding stated “weak oversight” led to ineffective spending of funds. Additionally, ensure that a detailed breakdown of AB109 allocations is publicly reported.

2. Utilize at least 30% (or $90 Million) of the American Rescue Plan Act to:

1. Perform a post-Covid gaps analysis with a racial and neighborhood equity lens to advance supports for community based mental health, substance use treatment, jobs training, housing, violence prevention and restorative justice programs

2. Fund community-based infrastructure to fill the identified gaps in what our community needs informed by a participatory budgeting approach.

3. Plan to leverage State funding for mental health infrastructure and Homekey housing, and allocate local match funding as needed

4. Invest in expansion of County capacity needed to take full advantage of newly funded Medi-Cal benefits, including housing supports, under CalAIM, particularly for people who are exiting incarceration, people with mental illness, and people experiencing homelessness.

5. Swiftly administer funds to the most impacted residents and families who are in need of immediate and long-overdue direct cash assistance. Data shows that supporting residents in meeting basic human needs helps prevent unnecessary arrests and jail bookings.

3. Redirect at least $15 Million from the General Fund for a 24/7, permanent, Alternatives to 911 program for mental health and homelessness from the existing Sheriff’s Department Budget

4. Strengthen the analytical capacity of the Public Health Department through General Fund:

The most effective county governments have invested in and continue to grow their analytical capacity to ensure smart governance (Live Well San Diego, Get Healthy San Mateo, SF’s Program on Health and Equity and Sustainability, LA’s PLACE program, etc.) They have strong cross-sector assessment and evaluation teams that look at health, neighborhoods/place, and increasingly the impacts of over-criminalization; why does zip code drive how long a child will live and what can the county do to improve conditions? What zip codes over-represent the jail and probation department and why? The BOS should prioritize obtaining this data to inform how the county invests in some neighborhoods, at the expense of others. There is a glaring gap in the BOS interest in data for homeless services vs. data around the disproportionate impacts around arrests, incarceration, probation, etc.