Thirty years ago, Marin County opened its new jail, at the time touted as a state-of-the-art detention facility.
It was also a novel political compromise, addressing overcrowding at the county lockup and political opposition to building a large new building on the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Marin Center campus.
Instead of building a standalone building along Highway 101, the county built the 222-cell jail inside the knoll at the north end of the Civic Center.
Thirty years later, the 2023-24 Marin County Civil Grand Jury released a report finding that the jail is both outdated and too small for its changing population of inmates.
The grand jury report also looks at the county’s Juvenile Hall, located in Lucas Valley, and concludes that the facility is out of date, lacks needed facilities and is much larger – designed for 40 juveniles – than is needed for the daily average of eight young inmates it holds.
That facility is over 60 years old and the county is spending $3.2 million per year to run it. The Lucas Valley complex should be closed and a new juvenile hall included in a justice center complex.
The grand jury report says it is time for the county to at least commission a full-fledged study into building a new justice center that meets modern standards in meeting security demands and the health needs of local inmates in the jail and juvenile hall.
Absent from the grand jury’s report is where this new justice center – more of a campus-like facility – would be built and how it would be paid for.
The current jail, the grand jury recommends, would be retained for high-security inmates.
Location and cost are significant obstacles, but the grand jury is right to hold up a public mirror to the current situation and stress Marin could do better in the care and security of the jail’s inmates and in promoting a constructive path away from crime upon their release.
The civil grand jury is an annual court-appointed panel of local citizens that takes time to study local public issues and challenges.
After 30 years, it was probably right to take a hard look at the county jail.
Now the ball is in the county’s court, that of Marin law enforcement leaders and the Board of Supervisors.
The grand jury report says the existing jail is poorly designed to meet changes in the challenges of incarceration, from changes in state policies that have more inmates serving their sentences in county jails instead of state prisons to handling security demands around gang-related inmates and meeting the needs of inmates’ mental and substance-abuse problems.
In addition, because of those changes, there is growing pressure that the jail will not have enough single-cells that those inmates require for their security and that of other inmates.
“The growing need for single cells, combined with the current physical boundaries of the county jail portends a looming crisis caused by overcrowding,” the report states.
Building the jail “underground” essentially prevents any expansion of or improvements to the current facility, the grand jury concluded.
The jail also lacks an infirmary. Inmates requiring medical attention have to be taken to a hospital – costing taxpayers a budgeted $5 million per year, according to the report.
The grand jury points to the rehabilitation-focused reforms that are being implemented at San Quentin state prison as a possible model for the county.
It is certainly worth a look.
The “underground” jail has been largely out of sight and out of mind for a long time. The grand jury has lived up to its civic role in taking a deep look into how that facility is meeting today’s demands.
The panel finds it sorely lacking. Marin should and can do better, it finds.
That should prompt decisive and diligent action by county leaders.
A follow-up study – in depth and public – would be the logical response and next step.
