Open Letter to the Board of Supervisors:
Please allow me to introduce myself: My name is Jeff Chambliss, and I am president of the Santa Barbara Defenders (“SBD”). SBD is an organization of over 40 private criminal defense attorneys with practices in Santa Barbara County. Many of our clients are incarcerated in the Santa Barbara County Jail.
It is with grave concern that I am writing as we observe the numbers of persons incarcerated in the Santa Barbara County Jail tick upward from a pandemic low of below 550 to its current population of 650. And we observe, as well, that the county has put forth a Request For Proposal (“RFP”) to renovate the South County Jail for an ultimate cost to the taxpayers of $90 million dollars. This is exactly what we warned about when we spoke to you individually and when we addressed the Board. Not only is this the wrong direction for our community fiscally, but it’s also inhumane and undermines public safety.