Fighting the Main Jail Expansion
In a class-action lawsuit Mays v. Sacramento, Sacramento County was sued by three law firms on behalf of everyone incarcerated in Sac County jails. The Mays consent decree was finalized in 2020, which outlined that the County has to improve conditions in the jail related to medical and mental health care, suicide prevention, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and HIPPA (medical privacy laws). Since then, the vast majority of consent decree requirements (unrelated to building structure), are far from being met.
The county introduced the main jail expansion project as a way to meet the demands of the consent decree--despite the fact that the majority of the conditions outlined in the consent decree have nothing to do with the physical building. Read more the abhorent conditions inside the main jail here.
We’ve been fighting the main jail expansion project since it was introduced in 2020. We got the project canceled in 2021, then the county brought it back in 2022. It was officially paused in 2023. In 2024, the county hired a consulting firm, CGL Companies, to perform a ‘third party review’ of the project. In 2025 the board reviewed CGL's recommendations and once again voted to suspend the project. But this fight is far from over; county exectives and board members are still pushing for construction, and in June, 2025 the board voted to allocate $2 million to a jail construction reserve fund.
Jail Population Reduction
California incarcerates a higher percentage of its people than almost any country on earth, with more than 199,000 residents locked up in its prisons, jails, youth detention centers, and psychiatric facilities. As of March 2025, there are 3,278 people incarcerated in the Sacramento County jail system. More than 80% of those incarcerated are being held pretrial, meaning they are legally presumed to be innocent. Unhoused individuals make up more than a third of the total jail population. Black and Latine people are significantly overrepresented in the jail population.
In 2022, Sacramento County created it's first Jail Population Reduction Plan (JPRP) due to a memorandum of agreement that followed the Mays consent decree. Their initial goal was to reduce the average daily population (ADP) of the main jail by ~600, but this figure has been challenged in recent years. We continue to fight to hold local officials accountable to this commitment, and to implement even greater measures to reduce the jail population.
Our Response to COVID-19
Our response to COVID-19 was immediate. We sent this letter to the Sheriff’s Department on March 12th, 2020. Following that public statement, we worked to support the Public Defender’s office with their motions that, if approved by a judge, would release hundreds if not thousands. The first motions approved the release of those with less than 60 days on their sentence. The Sacramento County Jail population overall was reduced by over 30% due to COVID-19 related releases. We are demanding that the requirement for people released early to return to finish their sentences be lifted, and that the County focus its efforts on continuing to reduce the jail population.
