The Alameda County Board of Supervisors Public Protection Committee convened for its annual state of the jail hearing on Thursday, November 20, 2025, from approximately 11:15 AM to after 1 PM. Chaired by Supervisor Elisa Marquez, the meeting featured four informational presentations: an updated jail population analysis by Wendy Ware of the JFA Institute, a state of the jail update from Lieutenant Daniel Murphy, the Title 15 inspection report for 2025 from Alameda County Health, and an Adult Forensic Behavioral Health (AFBH) update from Director Juan Taizan. The committee heard public comments on each item and highlighted significant progress in programming, therapeutic services, and suicide prevention, while noting ongoing challenges in nutrition and data integration.
Progress. All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Alamity County Board of Supervisors Public Protection Committee meeting for Thursday, November 20th. Um, can we please start with a roll call? Supervisor Miley. Supervisor Marquez. Present. Thank you. And if the clerk could please provide instructions for their members to speak on items on the agenda, whether they're in person or remote. For in-person participation, the meeting site is open to the public. If you'd like to speak on an item, you can fill out a speaker's card in the front of the room and hand it to me. And for remote participation, you can use the raise your hand function, and we will have comment after each item. Yes, we will. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Again, good morning, everyone. Welcome to the public protection committee's annual state of the jail hearing. This year's update is particularly meaningful as it reflects our continued investment in reimagining adult justice initiative spearheaded by the late Supervisor Richard Vae, whose vision and values I am honored to carry forward as the current chair. For current for context, RAJ initiative established 12 core elements that continue to guide the county's public safety work, emphasizing the need for ongoing data collection and analysis to better understand the drivers of Santa Rita Jail's population. In 2023, our board received the final RAJ report managed by our past probation chief and district two project manager Wendy Still. It is worth highlighting that several of the RAJ's recommendations align or overlap with the county's care first jails last initiative, especially around the importance of making data-driven decisions and informing program design. The RAJ report is available on my website, District 2 Alameda County CA.gov under stay informed drop-down menu. I am proud of Alameda County's consistent positive progress, including our ongoing work with Wendy Ware, who wears a who was a key, I apologize for that, who was a key force behind the RAJ initiative, and is with us here today to present an updated jail population analysis. This includes providing a deeper dive into arrests and booking trends, jail population characteristics characteristics, recidivism analysis, and pretrial opportunities. I applaud Sheriff Sanchez and her staff for continuing to fund Ms. Ware's critical research to better guide the county's investments towards rehabilitation and further support key culture shifts. Where there is more work ahead of us, the positive changes are visible. In fact, tomorrow I will have the opportunity to see firsthand this progress happening inside the jail facility. I'm very excited to attend the Labor's International Union of North America or Ailuna 304's seventh graduation at Santa Rita Jail. This transformational vocational program offered in partnership with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, trains participants in construction skills and provide certificates that keep certificates that help secure living wage jobs after their release. These transformative milestones remind us that meaningful change is both possible and already underway, even as we continue pushing for deeper system transformation. Again, our progress is the result of our partnerships across all stakeholders, including justice stakeholders, especially those with lived experience, county agency leadership and their central department staff, and our community advocates. I am encouraged by our ongoing dialogue and deepening collaboration as evident by our presenters from AC Health, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, so we may continue to build towards a more responsive and equitable public safety system. Thank you all for being here. I will also note that we do have to end this meeting shortly after 1 p.m. because Supervisor Miley and I have a special meeting at 1 30. So we will ask everyone to please keep their presentations concise and depending on how many speakers we may have to reduce public comment to one minute. So we will now start with our first item, which is an informational item. All the items on today's agenda are informational items. The first presenter I'd like to welcome and thank you so much for being here in person, Wendy Ware, president of the JFA Institute. Welcome, Wendy. And there should be PowerPoint presentations available online for everyone to review. And I believe your report has already been published and attached to our agenda. So welcome, Wendy. Thank you so much, and thank you for that wonderful introduction. I appreciate it. As you mentioned, I was part of the RAJ effort a couple of years ago, and all of the data that was incorporated in that report, we undertook this effort to update that data and look for emerging trends in the jail population. Just a bit of an introduction.