"The provocative move by the Berkeley-based Prison Law Office comes after years of the county agreeing about the need to improve its deputy-to-inmate ratios - by either increasing custody staff or reducing the jail population - but not making meaningful progress, said Donald Specter, a senior staff attorney and former executive director for the law firm, which secured the reform agreement."
""After meeting with the county over many years, we concluded that court intervention was the only way we were going to be able to force the county to comply with the agreements they made when they signed the consent decree in 2018," Specter said in an interview. A motion filed earlier this week by Specter's office calls for a federal judge in the Northern District of California to issue a contempt ruling against the county, and "impose for every month the county is not in compliance, a monthly fine (commensurate) with the savings the county enjoys through its noncompliance.""
A federal monitor and the Prison Law Office have asked a judge to hold Santa Clara County in contempt for failing to ensure inmates receive adequate medical care under a 2018 federal consent decree. The consent decree followed a 2015 class-action alleging deplorable jail conditions and focused on improving access to mental health and health care. County officials repeatedly agreed to improve deputy-to-inmate ratios by hiring more custody staff or reducing the jail population but failed to make meaningful progress. The motion requests a contempt ruling and monthly fines tied to savings the county gains from noncompliance. The county's jails have experienced additional in-custody deaths and costly settlements.
Read at The Mercury News
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