DATE:
December 9, 2025
25
TO:
Board of Supervisors
SUBJECT
Title
SHERIFF UPDATE ON SAN DIEGO COUNTY DETENTION FACILITIES INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDS (DISTRICTS: ALL)
Body
OVERVIEW
The San Diego County Sheriff's Office (Sheriff's Office) has the legal and moral obligation to care for individuals in its custodial setting. The Sheriff's Office operates a system of seven uniquely designed detention facilities located throughout San Diego County, with a combined average daily population of more than 4,300 incarcerated persons, which is trending towards an average daily population increase of 12 percent higher due to Proposition 36.
The Sheriff's Office has been making intentional efforts to improve service delivery to those in its custodial care. This has been achieved through focused and extraordinary changes to existing systems and processes centered on medical and mental health care services, intake procedures and screening, and contraband and narcotic detection. The Sheriff's Office has added physician level evaluations at every intake facility resulting in the ability to conduct a comprehensive review of chronic and pre-existing medical conditions. The capacity of the Out-Patient Stepdown Unit (OPSD) has also been expanded thus creating the ability to provide therapy and treatment to a larger part of our Seriously Mentally Ill (SMI) population.
Unfortunately, improvements in these focused areas are often constrained due to the physical footprint and limited square footage of detention facilities that were not designed to accommodate and house population increases and longer term stays that resulted from California's Public Safety Realignment in 2011 (Assembly Bill 109). With long-stay incarcerated populations comes greater need and investments to replace and renovate the dated detention facilities and existing infrastructure within the jail system to operate proper medical and mental health care and substance use treatment, educational and vocational pro...
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