Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s open Rountree Rehabilitation and Re-entry Facility
UPDATE 05/11/18 6:30 p.m. To help with rehabilitation and to keep people from going back to jail, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office opened their new Rountree Re-entry Facility in Watsonville.
The Sheriff’s Office said the Rehabilitation and Re-Entry facility is part of a tiered incarceration plan for inmates who have demonstrated their commitment to changing their lives.
It will provide a variety of educational and vocational program areas, interview and counseling rooms, classrooms, indoor recreational areas, and improved areas for visitors.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart says, “we’re going to work on substance use, we’re gonna work on vocational, educational and different types of programs to prepare these people to reenter their communities. And we know that 98% nationwide of incarcerated people return to their communities eventually so we have to realize that even though these folks did something wrong they were held accountable, they are going to return to the community. So this model is going to return them in a much better condition then we received them.”
Each inmate will have a personalized plan that suits them best. Inmate Program Director Cynthia Chase says this is the most effective way to successfully get incarcerated people back into society, “If we don’t use individuals time while they’re in jail wisely and connect to resources and obtain or maintain skills they have then the likelihood of them returning to jail is incredibly high.”
The facility has 64 beds and will help with overcrowding in the main jail. It is approximately 16,000 square feet of housing, contact visiting, administration, and intake space.
Sheriff Hart says along with being a positive thing for the inmates, it should help jail staff too. The Santa Cruz County Main jail has been overcrowded for years and Sheriff Hart says you can feel the tension when it gets to a certain population, “to be able to spread out the population between four facilities now rather than three I think is going to be a relief to the staff, it’s not going to be so hard on the facilities and it’s certainly not going to be as hard on the incarcerated people.”
It is a process to be accepted into the facility. All inmates will still be booked through the main jail. Once they are sentenced they will have to show good behavior. Then they will move to the medium security Rountree Facility, once they enter a program their, they can move to the new Rountree Rehabilitation Facility.
Sheriff Hart says they are finishing the final touches on the facility and expect to start populating it in the next month.
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To help with rehabilitation and to keep people out of jail, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office opened their new Rountree Re-entry Facility in Watsonville.
The Sheriff’s Office said the Rehabilitation and Re-Entry facility is part of a tiered incarceration plan for inmates who have demonstrated their commitment to changing their lives.
It will provide a variety of educational and vocational program areas, interview and counseling rooms, classrooms, indoor recreational areas, and improved areas for visitors.
Sheriff Jim Hart said, “We believe strongly that preparing incarcerated persons for release not only decreases the likelihood they may re-offend but will help them become more productive members of our community”.
The facility has 64 beds and will help with overcrowding in the main jail. It is approximately 16,000 square feet of housing, contact visiting, administration, and intake space.
KION’s Ashley Keehn will have more at 5 and 6 p.m.
