How Many Jail Beds Does Shasta County Need? Key Stakeholders Agree: No One Knows.

On Tuesday, January 11, the Board of Supervisors will discuss whether to approve an architectural and engineering design contract for a downtown expansion to the county’s jail. That design process could help determine how much a jail expansion project might cost and how many beds it would provide, two key questions that have not yet been answered beyond estimates.

But an architectural design won’t help the county determine the answer to another key question: how many jail beds are actually needed to address community concerns about public safety.

And while state law requires formally assessing jail capacity needs before constructing new or expanded jail facilities, county supervisors have not yet publicly discussed starting that process.

The county last updated its Jail Facility Needs Assessment in 2018, the same year the Shasta County Grand Jury called out county officials for failing to use the needs assessment to act on jail capacity needs.

At the time jail capacity was at 381 beds with a need, according to the assessment, for an additional 135. Since then, the county has first expanded jail capacity to 495 beds then, in July 2022, lost 120 beds due to a lack of jail staffing.

A jail needs assessment is more than a formality. Understanding how many jail beds the county needs requires understanding and documenting the complex web of public safety responses that Shasta County uses. Those include diversion programs, bail programs, county jail beds, out-of-county jail bed contracts, and alternative custody arrangements like electronic monitors and probation.

But Shasta County Public Works Director Al Cathey told Shasta Scout the lack of a Jail Facility Needs Assessment thus far in the county’s process is not unexpected.

“We are still in the strategic phase of planning,” Cathy wrote by email, “and there are still a lot of steps in the process between now and when we would do a needs assessment. At this point, a new jail has not been approved by the Board of Supervisors, and moving forward in the planning process will depend on their decisions.”

But some community members who attended a recent public workshop about jail expansion, expressed concern about the speed with which the county is moving forward on a jail expansion and how much is still unknown.

County officials have not yet publicly discussed what kinds of public safety concerns they’re hoping to address with expanded capacity, or what data backs those concerns. Low-level crimes, for example, could be addressed through more robust mental health, substance use and housing diversion programs, rather than incarceration, to help solve underlying causes.

The county’s incarceration needs could also be affected by changes to policing and prosecution practices, jail capacity release policies, programs and services offered by the county’s probation department, housing and shelter availability, and state bail law, among many others.

But for County Supervisor Patrick Jones, who’s championing forward movement for a downtown jail expansion, unanswered questions like these should not be a deterrent to progress.

Speaking to Shasta Scout by phone several weeks ago, Jones said that he believes the board will, and should, act quickly to fund a county jail expansion downtown. He explained that the planned expansion of the existing facility is based not on the county’s needs, but on how much expansion is possible at the available downtown site, saying that future jail projects could occur as the need for more capacity becomes clear. 

And while Jones says he’s aware that costs and timelines for new jail facilities are still only rough estimates, he doesn’t believe that matters. “At the end of the day,” Jones explained, “No place will be cheaper (to build a jail expansion) than downtown Redding and no place will be faster . . . No matter what it costs.”

In contrast, Jones used similarly estimated costs for Sheriff Johnson’s proposed new jail construction outside of downtown Redding as a reason not to consider it. “The facility the sheriff is talking about off site,” Jones said, “is anywhere from a half billion to a billion dollar facility so he’s talking about something that we can’t afford. So I’m a little confused why we are talking about something that we can’t do.”

Many community members who attended the recent public workshop to share their input on jail expansion plans were also a little confused about why county officials are talking about things the county doesn’t appear able to do. Some questioned why officials would consider a jail expansion while the current jail is partially closed due to low staffing. Others asked how the county would afford to pay for the building and ongoing operations of a larger jail facility.

Shasta County CEO Pat Minturn has estimated that the Sheriff’s proposed outside-of-downtown new jail construction might hold 1,000 beds and cost around $500 million. In contrast, the downtown jail expansion would provide 256 beds and cost about $125 million, Minturn says.

But those numbers are still only vague estimates, as county Sheriff Michael Johnson and Public Works Director Al Cathey explained to Shasta Scout by email. They’re loosely based on similar jail construction projects in Santa Barbara and Trinity Counties which cost about $300,000/bed. Cathey says his department is using an estimate of $500,000/bed to account for recent increases in building costs.

County leaders have long wanted to expand jail capacity, but funding operational costs has remained a persistent problem. Twice in the last decade, Shasta County leadership has accepted state grant funds to build a larger jail. Twice, they’ve sent the funds back, citing inability to fund the day-to-day costs of running a larger facility.

But when Supervisor Tim Garman spoke to Shasta Scout several weeks ago, he said he believes supervisors should vote to start the downtown jail expansion project anyway. Garman said he’d never heard of a jail needs assessment and didn’t have answers for exactly how many jail beds are needed, how much they’ll cost, or when the facility will be completed.

But those unknowns, he said, wouldn’t impact his desire to begin the process of jail expansion as soon as possible.

“We’re going to have to find a way to move ahead,” Garman explained. “Public safety demands that we get this project started.”

*Disclosure: As a member of the 2017/2018 Shasta County Grand Jury, Annelise Pierce participated in producing the Jury’s jail report.

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