Grand jury blasts mental health care at county jail; sheriff calls report ‘most factually inaccurate’ he’s seen (2024)

“Disturbing and stressful” physical conditions have compounded a growing mental health crisis at the Santa Cruz County Jail, where the corrections system has mistreated inmates suffering from mental illness and suicidal thoughts, according to an investigation published Tuesday by the Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury.

The civil grand jury criticized the jail’s health care contractor, Wellpath, the nation’s largest jail health care provider, for falling short of its responsibilities — providing care for only 18 instead of 24 hours per day — due to apparent staffing shortages and high turnover. The report also claims the jail has been improperly using solitary confinement cells as punishment, when an inmate is having a mental health crisis.

“The grand jury is deeply concerned with the poor mental health treatment provided to our inmate population,” the report concludes. “This extends to the treatment of inmates living with or developing mental health challenges, through jail time and post release. This abiding concern is abundantly detailed in this report. The treatments described, such as solitary confinement, are inflicted on people that are still presumed innocent.”

That report immediately spawned an argument between the grand jury and Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart. The issue: the grand jury’s inability to speak directly with inmates about jail conditions.

The jurors who make up the volunteer government watchdog body were unable to talk with inmates. The report claims the sheriff’s office denied the grand jury’s repeated requests to interview inmates during its investigation, a denial it says is an apparent violation of state rules.

Instead the jury relied on jail tours, interviews with corrections deputies, and state reports on the jail’s operation.

According to the grand jury’s foreperson, Kim Horowitz, jurors requested interviews with inmates at the county’s Main Jail during a hunger strike earlier this year.

“The sheriff’s response was that it wasn’t safe,” Horowitz told Lookout on Tuesday. “We offered to [do it virtually], but they shut us down.” Horowitz said the jury then requested an interview with an inmate at the county’s lower-security Rountree Rehabilitation and Recovery Facility, but was still denied.

Hart told Lookout, also on Tuesday, that “I’ve been here a long time, and this report was by far the most factually inaccurate report I’ve read from the civil grand jury.”

Despite state rules protecting a civil grand jury’s access to inmates for interviews, Hart characterized the request as out of the ordinary and said the interaction with the grand jury represents a departure from past practice.

“Speaking to inmates would have enhanced the investigation”

“The law is pretty clear that we can do that, that we can interview inmates,” Horowitz said. According to the report, the Board of State and Community Corrections’ rules require jails to provide a civil grand jury access to inmates during investigations into jail conditions. “Speaking to some inmates about their experiences and opinions … would have greatly enhanced the jail investigation,” the report read.

Horowitz said the grand jury was working with county counsel Ann Jackson on a subpoena to force the sheriff’s office to comply, but that the jury’s legal deadline to wrap up its report was too tight. Reached by phone Tuesday, Jackson declined to comment, referring Lookout to county spokesperson Jason Hoppin, who then referred us back to Jackson. Only minutes after initially declining to comment, Jackson’s secretary said she was no longer available. Jackson did not respond to a follow-up email, as well.

Just as in counties throughout the state, the Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury convenes each year with a new roster of 19 jurors to investigate local government throughout the county and its cities. Grand juries have a long leash on what they investigate. However, they must at least produce two specific reports each year: an investigation into the operations and conditions of the county jail system, and a follow-up report on how the local government has responded to the previous year’s investigations.

Jim Hart: This is the civil grand jury’s “most factually inaccurate report I’ve read”

Any government agency called out in a grand jury investigation has 60 days to respond. Reached by phone Tuesday, Hart said “the politically correct thing to do would just say we will take our 60 days and file a response.”

However, the sheriff went on to sharply criticize the grand jury and reject its claims.

“I’ve been here a long time, and this report was by far the most factually inaccurate report I’ve read from the civil grand jury,” Hart said. “There is definitely something going on over there, whether in terms of bias or, I don’t know.”

Hart said his office has historically had a cordial relationship with the watchdog body, but that has led to an informal process of interview and information-gathering. Typically, Hart said, his office will grant jurors access to anything to which they are legally entitled, whether it be documents, data or discussions with deputies.

Although he described the inmate interview request as odd, he said his office was still willing to comply.

“The civil grand jury requested to speak with inmates, we said, OK, which inmates, and they said we don’t know, just produce us an inmate,” Hart told Lookout. “It was a highly unusual request. They wouldn’t clarify who. So we said, just send us a subpoena with who you want to speak with and when but they never did.

“Asking us to just produce a generic inmate, there is no such thing. We’ve never had that type of request before.”

Hart said the informal, verbal relationship his office has traditionally enjoyed with the civil grand jury worked against him in this case.

He said that moving forward, the sheriff’s office will require subpoenas from the grand jury before producing any information. That way, if there are similar claims in the future, the sheriff’s office can fall back on a paper trail. Unless there is a subpoena, there is no violation of state law, he said.

“We’re not ignoring subpoenas,” Hart said.

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