Quick Take
Many Santa Cruz County inmates haven't been able to hug their families since the pandemic took hold in 2020. Sheriff Jim Hart said his office could bring back a stripped-down version of contact visits this year.
While Nichole Brantley was in jail struggling with addiction 15 years ago, her daughter was not yet 2 years old.
“It killed me to not be able to see her,” Brantley, who now works to reunite families with the Santa Cruz-based Parents Center, said Wednesday. “When you are on the inside, you need things to anchor and motivate you and to connect you to the outside – to remind you why you don’t want to end up back in jail. Being able to see and hold your kids gives people that reminder, and motivates them to get out and stay out.”
Brantley was one of several people at a county board of supervisors meeting urging Sheriff Jim Hart to bring back jail visits that allow for hugs and physical contact between inmates at lower-security facilities and their families. As with jails across California, these contact visits ended with the advent of the pandemic in 2020. Now, four years later, contact visits have not returned, thanks to staffing issues and concerns around the fentanyl epidemic, according to the sheriff’s office.
However, Hart told county supervisors that his office was looking to potentially bring back contact visits “around August or September,” as long as it could fill at least four correctional vacancies.
“These aren’t things we take lightly … we want our inmates to be healthier, we want them to have family time, or kid time – we’re all parents ourselves,” Hart told the supervisors.
He said existing vacancies are already requiring officers to work overtime, which is helping to cause rapid turnover: “We have to do some things where we’re not only protecting our incarcerated populations but we’re protecting our employees as well.”
If contact visits do come back on that timeline, the program will be a stripped-down version of its pre-pandemic past. Instead of every weekend throughout each month, the sheriff’s office will look to offer the visits one weekend day per month at the jail’s lower-security facilities at Rountree in Watsonville and Blaine Street in Santa Cruz, Chief Deputy Daniel Freitas told supervisors. (The main jail did not have a contact visit program pre-pandemic.) Freitas, who oversees the corrections division, said that frequency would be “more achievable” and require fewer mandatory overtime shifts.
“We’re also trying to do [contact visits] safely,” Freitas said. “Before, when we had contact visits, we didn’t have the fentanyl epidemic we have right now. So, trying to prevent fentanyl from coming into the jails is a significant concern.”
Freitas said the sheriff’s office plans to purchase a body scanner — similar to those seen at airports — to check visitors at Rountree, as well as put a canine unit on shift. The exodus of correctional officers over the past four years also means the sheriff will have to train staff and newer hires on how to safely monitor contact visits.
“Many people in the community see this as a really important thing when it comes to health and wellness,” District 3 County Supervisor Justin Cummings said Wednesday. “Not just for the people who are in the jail system, but for their children.”
Julie Macecevic, a member of the county’s Commission on Justice and Gender and executive director of the Walnut Avenue Family and Women’s Center in Santa Cruz, told supervisors that contact visits with family are “crucial” for inmate health and interrupting the cycle of incarceration.
Macecevic, who has worked for more than 30 years with children experiencing trauma, said she’s seen first-hand the impact of family separation. The connection between a child and their parent, Macecevic said, could be the determining factor for a child’s mental and physical health, and whether they can rise out of the cycle of trauma, crime and incarceration.
“If intended outcomes of incarceration include real rehabilitation and accountability, and if we want to stop these cycles of violence, and if the end goal is keeping these families together, we must do everything we can to … encourage safe interactions between parents and their children,” Macecevic said.
Brantley said her children were her “biggest motivator” to stay sober and get out of jail.
“If we are going to punish [inmates], jail is enough punishment,” Brantley said. “I believe [contact visits] will be a better change for our community in the long run.”
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