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Board discusses how behavioral health efforts could ease pressure on planned jail expansion
Summary
Board members and presenters discussed whether evidence-based interventions — co-responders, diversion, and reentry programming — could reduce demand on the county jail and influence timing/capacity needs for a jail expansion project.
During questions following the behavioral-health presentation, board members raised the county jail project and whether the programming proposed could reduce pressure on capacity planning. A member noted the jail project includes roughly $10 million of a $46 million project to add capacity and special-needs cells; presenters said programming could reduce some pressure but outcomes would take time to materialize.
Phil Golley and Sharla Lopez told the board that early intervention and programming may reduce arrests and recidivism for some groups, but that severe cases and people in acute crisis will still require detention or special-needs housing. "I think it could relieve some of the pressure... probably be a bit of a lag there," Golley said. County leadership emphasized that the jail redesign also responds to changes in mental-health needs since the facility was built in 1993 and the need for more special-needs cells.
