At a Nov. 4 roundtable with the Peninsula Press, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo offered a novel, and presumably controversial, thought: utilizing empty jail cells within the Santa Clara County Jail to detain methamphetamine addicts who commit a misdemeanor.
Liccardo stated:
I’d prefer to see us repurposing many of those cells for cleansing and inpatient remedy … and sure which means we really need to detain them.”
The proposal is a part of Liccardo’s “Compassionate San Jose” plan to addresses town’s homelessness disaster.
A memorandum offered to the Metropolis Council on Sept. 22 stated a detention facility would serve people who commit minor prison offenses, reminiscent of vandalism, whereas “underneath the affect of methamphetamine or one other stimulant or psychoactive substance” and pose “a security or crime danger that makes the particular person inappropriate for voluntary detention within the County’s Mission Road Restoration Heart/Sobering Heart.”
The memorandum additionally lists potential websites for such facility, together with present jails within the county. Santa Clara County Jails have 4,500 beds in whole. As of Dec 3, 2021, solely 2,405 of these beds are at present occupied.
In response to Marcus Ismael, Liccardo’s communications’ supervisor, people arrested can be given the selection to bear detox within the detention facility in lieu of serving jail time. Previous to their launch, people may also obtain details about additional remedy choices.
Ismael stated:
The coverage doesn’t name for the arrest of meth addicts, however for the redirection of individuals arrested for crimes who can be ill-served within the present construction due to their want for specialised medical care.”
Because the jails and Sobering Heart are run by Santa Clara County, this proposal would fall underneath the county’s, reasonably than town of San Jose’s, purview.
Correct funding may also decide the success of the mayor’s proposal. The San Jose Metropolis Council is contemplating allocating $500,000 of funding from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 in the direction of a partnership with Santa Clara County to convey the detox detention facility to fruition.
Decide Stephen Manley, who created California’s first Behavioral Well being Courtroom over 20 years in the past, doesn’t imagine $500,000 will probably be sufficient.
“You don’t ever get to the issue while you do issues on such a small scale,” stated Manley, who believes that tens of millions needs to be spent on offering ample remedy choices for people committing crimes whereas underneath the affect of medicine.
Chris Moore, former chief of the San Jose Police Division, stated:
Your cash is best spent reasonably than incarcerating [users] and getting them some remedy. … These assist mechanisms, these all value cash, however they’re less expensive from a public coverage perspective.”
Deaths brought on by methamphetamine or different psychostimulant overdose has been steadily rising over the past decade, with a 47% improve between 2019 and 2020 in Santa Clara County in keeping with the newest knowledge out there on the California Overdose Dashboard. In 2020, the San Jose Police Division reported that 60% of its citations and arrests concerned meth use or possession.
However meth consumption is not only a risk to the person. Research have proven that meth use will increase violent conduct.
Dr. Keith Humphreys, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford College, stated:
Folks on meth are extra aggressive bodily, typically sexually, verbally, and the present political tradition at West Coast cities is to not do something about that legally.”
Humphreys additionally served as a member of the White Home Fee on Drug Free Communities.
Moore believes that merely arresting people is not going to remedy the issue:
Should you follow the mannequin of simply arresting folks, you’re not going to get anyplace. Crime is just not going to go down and people who find themselves addicted are usually not going to get served in one of the simplest ways attainable.:
Nonetheless, legislation enforcement brokers should still have to be concerned even when arrests aren’t made to make sure public security, Humphreys stated:
If we ship a social employee out to seize anyone who’s aggressive and uncontrolled on meth, eventually, somebody’s going to get killed. I want we didn’t want the police to do that, however they need to in a gun-packed society with a substance that’s actually tied to violence.”
Liccardo’s proposal would supply legislation enforcement brokers an alternative choice to inserting prison costs on customers whereas additionally retaining communities secure.
Nonetheless, dissenters of the proposal imagine that assigning duty to legislation enforcement is the very downside with this proposal. Silicon Valley Debug, a prison justice group based mostly in San Jose, has been advocating to halt this proposal from transferring ahead.
Rosie Chavez, a Silicon Valley Debug consultant, stated:
Having the police concerned in that proposal was my large concern. Extra money needs to be spent on applications, not detaining folks.”
Chavez additionally argues that detaining folks in order that they bear cleansing would power people who are usually not prepared for sobriety down a path to restoration with out the sources they would wish for assist in the long run.
Coverage makers are thus left to determine whether or not to prioritize defending communities from crimes dedicated by meth customers or guaranteeing customers are receiving psychological well being and social assist after they determine they want it. To do each would require a powerful partnership between town’s well being and public security departments.
At the moment, the Mission Sobering Heart, situated simply across the nook from the Primary County Jail in San Jose, exists as a partial various to reserving customers who commit misdemeanors. The Sobering Heart permits people to obtain medical care whereas present process cleansing, however their stays might not exceed 24 hours.
In response to Bruce Copley, the director of Santa Clara County Division of Alcohol and Drug Companies, a lot of the people that the middle sees are introduced in by legislation enforcement brokers. Police are given the selection to both ebook a person who has dedicated a non-violent crime or convey the person to the Sobering Heart, the place customers can detoxify.
Often, legislation enforcement brokers want to make use of the Sobering Heart, and it is rather uncommon that customers select to not keep, Copley stated. Every day, the middle sees about three to 5 customers introduced in by law enforcement officials.
Not like the detention facility being proposed by Liccardo, people are dropped at the Sobering Heart voluntarily. In actual fact, the plan to detain people committing crimes for the aim of cleansing is probably not authorized until it’s court docket ordered, during which case it will be no totally different from going through jail time.
Manley, who has met with Liccardo to debate this proposal, stated:
You possibly can’t make a detox heart involuntarily. I mentioned this with the mayor, the one place you possibly can maintain somebody involuntarily is a jail or a locked facility.”
As a substitute, Manley believes that town ought to construct extra voluntary cleansing websites, permitting people to remain longer than the 24-hour restrict positioned by the Mission Road Sobering Heart.
Whereas it takes 9 to 24 hours to come back off the excessive of meth, it might take way more time for the physique to totally metabolize meth. Thus, longer stays would enable people to have entry to medical sources to soundly bear the preliminary levels of withdrawal.
For a methamphetamine addict, size of keep at a cleansing facility might range between at some point to at least one week, relying on elements reminiscent of severity of habit and underlying well being standing. And in keeping with Copley, there are usually not sufficient cleansing facilities in San Jose to fulfill calls for, with present websites having waitlists for placement.
In San Francisco, a program was began earlier this yr that equally follows a complete abstinence mannequin. The fully city-funded program supplies housing, remedy, and drug and alcohol counseling to substance customers as an alternative choice to imprisoning them. This system additionally serves people who have been previously incarcerated and is run underneath the Grownup Probation Division.
The San Francisco-based program might function one resolution for San Jose’s wrestle to fight crime and meth use.
Proper now, the vote to approve funding allocation of town’s ARPA finances has been deferred to Jan. 15. Till then, a lot of this proposal for a detox detention facility stays up within the air.
This story was originally published by Peninsula Press, a challenge of Stanford Journalism Program. Extra reporting by Melissa Newcomb, Kavish Harjai, and Christopher Giles.
