Santa Cruz County works to stop re-offenders

Santa Cruz County officials announced that the county is taking part in the White House’s Data-Driven Justice Initiative. The program works to find data-driven strategies to stop non-violent criminals with mental health issues from returning to jail.

More than 100 local jurisdictions are taking part in the initiative. According to officials, every year millions of low-level, non-violent offenders costs local governments about $22 billion to incarcerate. The hope is to keep offenders from being kept in jail because they cannot afford bond.

Had Santa Cruz native David Giannini never gotten sober he says he’d probably have ended up behind bars… or something even worse.

“Either jail or quite possibly hospitals or death actually,” said Giannini.

Giannini, now clean and sober for more than 20 years, says it doesn’t matter if you are free or an inmate, addicts need to get help.

“This will ensure that if you are incarcerated that when you get out your reentry into society will be so much smoother,” added Giannini.

With that reasoning in mind, Santa Cruz County is teaming up with more than 100 other communities and the White House.

The idea is to figure out the best ways to end mass incarceration of low level non-violent inmates with substance or mental illness problems.

“Those (inmates) with substance abuse disorders or mental health problems tend to languish in our jails and prisons for long periods of time without treatment,” said Santa Cruz County Probation Chief Fernando Fernando Giraldo.

Giraldo says the county already has several successful programs in place to fight this problem, but now new data gathered from bi-monthly meetings with the White House will help them keep better track of the inmates who continue to slip in and out of the cracks.

“So it’s really about who those people are and targeting our resources to the highest users or what we call the frequent flyers,” said Giraldo.

Giraldo also cited a study from the University of South Florida. It revealed that in Miami-Dade County over a five-year period, 97 people with severe mental illness got arrested 2,200 times, spent 27,000 days in jails and 13,000 days in hospitals and emergency rooms.

The estimated total cost to taxpayers – $13 million.

That is a cost Santa Cruz County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty wants to avoid.

“What we are looking for are strategies to better address this population to save us money, have a better impact on the community and approve the offender’s lives,” said Coonerty.

Giraldo also says fixing the problem isn’t about letting everyone go free.

“We shouldn’t be releasing everybody and saying goodbye ‘see you next time’… we should have a plan for those and we should have a way access their risk to reoffend,” said Giraldo.

Santa Cruz County isn’t getting any money from the White House for this initiative, but Coonerty did mention a new expansion to MEDI-CAL that might bring more funds. That will likely take effect in 2017.