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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCORRESPONDENCE - 65ACity Council Meeting Correspondence 4/4/2017 Item No, 65A AGREEMENT FOR JAIL REUSE STUDY OF THE SANTA ANA JAIL Date of Sender /Rep. Agency Received after Correspondence deadline. 41412017 Christina Fialho OC Register No Tuesday, April 4, 2017 Page 1 of 1 Orozco, Norma From: Christina Fialho <christina.fialho @gmail.com> Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2017 2:28 PM To: eComment Subject: Public Comment on Agenda Item #65A Attachments: CIVIC_PublicComment.pdf Hello, Attached is our public comment on Agenda Item #65A. Will the City Council members receive a copy of this in advance of tonight's meeting? Warm regards, Christina Fialho 1 4/4/2017 Piint Article: Santa Ana's motto: !ails not schools ORANGE COUNTY MG1;r73r1FER Santa Ana's motto: Jails not schools By CHRISTINA FIALHO and DIANA ZUNIGA 2017 -04 -04 12:44:46 In 2002, the City of Santa Ana changed its motto from "education first" to the "spirit of change." Since then, the city has embraced the wrong "spirit of change" by prioritizing iail and police expansion at the expense of education. Tonight, the Santa Ana City Council has the opportunity to change this history by refusing to contract with a company that promotes building new jails. The city is considering a contract with Vanir Construction Management, Inc., to conduct a "jail reuse study" of the Santa Ana City Jail. Vanir has a track record of turning "jail reuse" possibilities into self- serving jail construction opportunities. Vanir's "jail reuse study" for Los Angeles County resulted in five multi - billion dollar jail expansion options. Vanir made no recommendations for reducing the jail population or developing alternatives to detention. In fact, although the Vera Institute for Justice and the Chief Executive Office of Los Angeles County issued reports with recommendations on how to lower the jail population, Vanir did not even address these recommendations in its own report. Vanir's "jail reuse study" ultimately was a study on jail expansion. In San Diego County, Vanir was the construction management company responsible for building the Women's Detention Facility in Santee, which is nearly triple the size of the old facility. In Indio, Vanir is currently at work constructing the East County Detention Center, which will add 1.273 new fail cells for Riverside County. Vanir also is building the new Tuolumne County Juvenile Detention Facility to incarcerate more youth. Meanwhile, the city of Santa Ana is spending over $19.5 million dollars this year to arrest and incarcerate youth, according to a new report from Resilience OC. Education is certainly not first in Santa Ana. Although school suspensions, which directly correlate to the likelihood of a child ending up in jail or prison, were on the decline in Santa Ana last year, the city has experienced declining school enrollment. The children of Santa Ana are literally disappearing. This is one reason why nearly 300 Santa Ana educators were handed pink slips last month, indicating potential layoffs. The city of Santa Ana can do better than Vanir, but Vanir's expertise in jail expansion is perhaps exactly what city officials have always wanted. In January 2016, Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC) filed a multi - individual federal civil rights complaint against the Santa Ana City Jail for unlawful and degrading strip searches of immigrant women. CIVIC and local advocates in Santa Ana entered into a series of meetings with the City Manager's office, educating city officials on alternatives to detention and incarceration and on how other cities have repurposed jails. After a year of community input and discussions around repurposing the jail entirely, the city of Santa Ana released a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) in December for a reuse study on the Santa Ana City Jail. The reuse study was to include an evaluation of alternatives to detention and an evaluation of jail conditions. And two of the three reuse proposals were supposed to be for non - punitive facilities, such as a residential building or mixed -use offices. http:llsvww.ocregister.cam /common /printer/ view .php' ?db= oeregistcr &id= 748451 1/2 4/4/2017 Print Article: Santa Ana's nmtto: Jails not schools Vanir, a company with no connections to the local community, responded. As a construction management firm, it was unclear how the company would effectively assess jail conditions for vulnerable prisoners and detainees at the facility. And with a flimsy track record, at best, on alternatives to detention, it was doubtful that Vanir could provide the city with an evaluation of alternative to detention options. So, after the deadline to submit responses to the RFQ passed, the City of Santa Ana changed the scope of its RFQ to only focus on jail reuse, which the city now defines as including "continuing Jail operations." The city gave no notice of this change to the other bidder. The other bidder was a group of four organizations: CIVIC, Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), Builders of Hope, and Torti Gallas + Partners. Together, we have over 90 years of combined experience conducting reuse assessments on public and private buildings, running alternative to detention programs, generating cost effective alternative to incarceration strategies, and monitoring jails, including the Santa Ana City Jail The city of Santa Ana has a simple choice to make tonight. Santa Ana can either contract with Vanir, turning a blind eye to the growing community opposition in Orange County to public and private incarceration construction. Or it can embrace the spirit of change and welcome an innovative reimagining of these traumatic and oppressive facilities by reissuing the original RFQ. Christina Fialho is the co- founder /executive director of CIVIC. Diana Zuniga is the statewide coordinator for CURB. © Copyright 2017 Freedom Communications. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy & Terms of Service I Copyright I Site Mao http:// www. ocregister. com/ common /printer/ view .php ?db= ocregister&id- 748451 2/2