Board of Supervisors — 2020-07-16

Hi.

Good afternoon, I'll now call to order the July 16th 2020 special meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Would the clerk please call the roll?

Mr. Lavinino? Mr Lavinino? There

you are! Mr. Lavinino?

I think we have an audio problem. I don't think they...

I heard Supervisor Adam.

Yep, okay now I can hear you Jacqueline.

Great. Okay

thank

you.

Would the clerk please call the roll?

Mr. Lavagnino

Here.

Mr. Williams

Here.

Ms. Hartman Here. Mr. Adam

Here.

Chair Hart

Good afternoon. We are the Lemon Farmers in Santa Maria and I wanted to continue the dialogue from Tuesday. To reiterate, we are requesting the Board of Supervisors act on adopting hemp regulations that protect residences and current businesses because hemp is an ex-cannabis. It is the same plant with the same nuisances especially odor. I was heartened to hear Supervisor Hartman address the odor The odor is not like other commodities, it is a public nuisance. And I was also encouraged to hear Supervisor Williams acknowledge the threat and seriousness of hemp cultivation and his desire to do something if he could.

Well the good news is you can do something as most California counties already have done something. I've talked with every county in California and here are those statistics. 43 of the 58 counties in California are acting on this threat. Twenty-one have adopted or drafted regulations, including SLO and Ventura. Twenty-two currently have moratoriums in place for the specific purpose of adopting land use regulations.

The regulations in some cases include a ban on research institutions or a limitation of one acre for research. But controlling the research institutions was just a side benefit. The reason California counties have proactively put land use regulations in place is because they know the state plan does not address land use. And this is an extremely important point, both the federal plan and the proposed state plans do not include land use regulations by design. Restrictions like minimum acreage, setbacks, odor mitigation are not included And CDFA has specifically stated they expect each county to develop their own land use regulations, as was done with cannabis.

Now in 2017 you put an urgency ordinance in place forbidding hemp cultivation stating the purpose and intent of this interim urgency ordinance is to study and establish land use regulations concerning medical non-marijuana and industrial hemp Now 10 days prior to the expiration of each urgency ordinance, a written report describing measures taken to alleviate the condition is required.

Well it hasn't been alleviated and my question is why? And where are these reports? Hemp is the new cannabis and without land use regulations in place by October 2020 you will be opening the floodgates I am asking you to formally place this on your agenda and put land use regulations in place to protect residences and businesses. You can do something. Counties throughout California have already done a great deal.

Hoping the hemp market will crash or the state plan will deter growers is not a strategy. Fearing lawsuits, or what your constituents might say or do is not an excuse for inaction You know, you were elected to act ethically in accomplishing your mission to provide a healthy, safe and prosperous environment.

Thank

you. Do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Paulson.

We will now go to Hazel Mortensen to be followed by Renee O'Neill

Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is Hazel Mortenson a resident of Solvang. I am totally opposed to the horse-drawn carriage we have here. A previous owner was an ex convict who had no money for hay and a reporter phoned asking me for money to pay for the hay. The fellow hired Newspaper as he cared about the horses being hungry. I immediately took the money to their office.

I then phoned the previous mayor and asked why the city allowed such a man to risk lives in an overcrowded city? I was told we needed the Honan as the tourists want it. I told him, he was a disgrace to allow such an operator to risk tourist lives. We now have new owners The City Council told them horses cannot be working above a certain temperature, and by law they are only allowed so many passengers on rides. Unfortunately, they don't comply with these conditions.

When I speak before our council, I am screamed and yelled at and called a liar and mentally ill over the microphone. In addition, after I and another woman spoke We both receive crank phone calls every few minutes. I finally picked up the phone and said, I know you're members of the Honan's family and I have put the tape recorder on my phone. Call me one more time and the police will visit you.

The other woman they have scared off she is afraid. I want no part of my brawl we can't let them control us. The horses need our voices to get justice. Please help these beautiful creatures, thank you kindly.

Thank you Ms. Mortenson.

We will now go to our final speaker Renee O'Neill

Good afternoon, Supervisors. I imagine it's interesting for you to be hearing from me on this particular topic but I wanted to thank you one for the decision you made on Tuesday regarding the EDRN we really really appreciate that step today I'm speaking in regard to following up with that with Concerns that cannabis farms that are banned in the EDRN could potentially become hemp farm. So I am making a formal administrative request that the board schedule hearing for developing land use regulations on hemp.

The state regulations that were established for legalizing marijuana and recreational marijuana under Article 10 were in place. But unlike marijuana, state and federal plans do not include restrictions like minimum acreage or setbacks and things like that. So the California Department of Food and Agriculture has specifically stated that they expect our counties to develop their own hemp land use regulations. And it is my understanding that we have a deadline to meet on that, and it's coming up very quickly.

I encourage you and urge you to please schedule that hearing as soon as possible so we don't overstep the deadline. And there's so many similar concerns with cannabis and hemp, not just the odor but the need for security. The other major concern is it consumes way more water than cannabis does. And causes very similar problems. So that's my request for today, and I again thank you for your decisions on Tuesday. We are very much relieved by that and I can't thank you enough for that.

For the supervisors who voted. Doss, I have something to say And Supervisor Lavinino. It seems like every time I'm watching you, you are on your cell phone like 90% of the time in these meetings texting. This is... I feel like you aren't listening. I feel like we are not being given the time of day because you're distracted with cell phones and or eating. Any comments?

I do. I respond to the many emails from you so that is one of the times that I am able to respond to your emails and in fact, you have in the past relied on my ability to read it in a public hearing because when your public comment has not come through or you have had trouble giving public comment in our current format, I have been able to alert staff of that. So in fact, my reading my email is what enabled in two occasions you to be able to do public comment at all so it's very strange for you to then get mad at me about it.

Thank

you Mr.

Chair.

That concludes our public comments

Chair Hart and members of the board, departmental item number one is from the county executive office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding our report on criminal justice and racial equity in Santa Barbara County.

Thank you. Mr. Malekian are you making the report? Thank you.

Chair Hart and members of the board, thank you for the opportunity today to continue the dialogue from June 11th on the issues of racial equity in specifically within the criminal justice system of Santa Barbara County. Before I begin, I do want and I've talked with the clerk of the board. There is a minor addition that needs to be made to the board letter appendix in in the criminal justice report Appendix A list 15 recommendations Only recommendations number 14 and 15 did not make it into the board letter.

We'll be working with the clerk to make that modification so that all 15 recommendations are part of that record. Thank you for that clarification I Have if I might digress For at least a moment nearly 50 years in law enforcement and local government And the issue of racial inequity And the role that criminal justice has played in that, has been part of that discussion for almost my entire career.

We are having yet another discussion in the aftermath of another tragedy and it feels as though perhaps that this might be a moment in which we can move in a different direction and make some changes that are long overdue We tend to focus, I think on the actions of individuals as opposed to focusing on the impacts of our systems. And the discussion that we are having today and the purpose of this report is to talk about the criminal justice system in this county with a particular focus on the average daily population.

As part of the inequity that we talk about when we have a national conversation one of the primary issues if not the primary issue Is the discussion about the number of people who are incarcerated in local jails and local prisons. The focus of this issue, the discussion about this issue both in this county and nationally did not begin on Memorial Day with the killing of George Floyd.

The discussion has been underway for quite some time and we reached a point I'll talk about some more specifics in a bit. But we reached the point where we were poised on a precipice to take some actions and only not jokingly at all, a lot of us have said along came COVID and COVID came first and COVID drove a number of changes that we had only been talking about.

And the question for today is what were those changes? What was the impact of those changes and which of those changes should we consider keeping in the days ahead? The issue of reducing the average daily population in our county jail has been, it's really been on the forefront for over a decade since the sheriff was first elected and convened the blue ribbon panel on jail overcrowding.

But it really took off in 2016 with the introduction of the stepping up program, which was approved by this board and whose focus was the diversion of mentally ill people out of the jail and into treatment facilities. We began an experimental program in co-response models which paired a law enforcement officer, a sheriff's deputy in this case with a trained psychiatric social worker to respond to calls involving the mentally ill and following up on patrol related calls where that team hadn't been available.

In 2019 at the direction of CEO Miyasato, we began a process that we call referred to as criminal justice mapping. And the intent of that project was to look at our system from the point in the field in which someone might be contacted by law enforcement to their adjudication at the end of a court process however long that process took. The focus of that criminal justice mapping effort was really to do two things. One was to intensify the effort of looking at the number of mentally ill people that were in the jail and could we get them into treatment? And secondly, could we make our system more efficient so that the use of incarceration was not the only tool that the system had to offer?

In 2020 as everyone is aware beginning in middle of March, the COVID pandemic began And a number of the steps we're going to talk about for the next few minutes were really taken in response to that pandemic and in response, or concerted desire to lower the risk for both incarcerated people and staff in our county jail system. And then on Memorial Day came the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

And the national focus on the issue of social justice, of inequities in the criminal justice system and a demand for change across the board. When I talk about the fact that the effort in this county has been underway for quite some time, I would call your attention to this chart which does not reflect any of the actions that were taken in response to COVID.

But in the response to changes in the law, changes in pretrial supervision practices, et cetera, that show a steady decline from 2016 to 2019 of nearly 16% in the average daily population in the jail and if this projection, and again it does not include what happened this year would have ultimately seen about a 26% decline by the year 2025 So this focus on reducing that population has been underway for some time.

A number of efforts have gone into that, particularly around the area of diversion. We're going to talk in greater length about several grants that the criminal justice mapping team procured The use of specialty courts such as mental health court, drug treatment court, veterans court and other specialty courts within the court system. And I should stop for a second and remind everyone that's listening because this becomes a source of confusion from time to time.

That the courts are no longer an official part of the county family of the county system. With the integration of, or rather the consolidation of the courts. They are actually state offices and state entities. We work very closely with them and they have been a direct active partner in the criminal justice mapping process but their administrative oversight occurs from the State Judicial Council and not from the county.

Co-response teams we have mentioned.

Mr. McKeon, I'm sorry, we're having a technical difficulty with the PowerPoint and CSP TV. We can see it here in the room but it isn't unfortunately able to broadcast so if we could just take a brief break and work out the technology of that and we'll come right back. I apologize for the delay. We'll reconvene the Board of Supervisors meeting and now we've fixed our technical challenge. Mr. Mulligan, I apologize but thank you for going back to show this chart.

Chair Hart, members of the board. Thank you. The chart in front of you reflects the actual and projected average daily population in the jail on an annual basis. And it shows that a number of the diversion efforts which I will discuss in a second that have been underway along with changes in the law between 2016 and 2019 reduced the average daily population by 15.8%, a little over 100 people.

The chart that's in front of you does not reflect the reductions that we're going to discuss that occurred in 2020 in response to COVID. And as you can see, the decline was projected to continue to reach an almost 26% reduction from the 2016 numbers by 2025. Some of the efforts that county departments have been employing in a broader sense, both independently and as part of the criminal justice mapping issue are the acquisition of several grants.

The use of specialty courts within the court system, mental health court, drug treatment court, veterans' courts, et cetera. The creation of a crisis stabilization unit and a sobering center under the auspices of behavioral wellness A holistic defense program put forward by the Public Defender's Office, which is really quite revolutionary in the sense that it seeks not just to deal with the client's case but really to try to impact the client's life and to keep the client from being recycled back through the program.

The district attorney has a misdemeanor diversion program. The sheriff's office has a highly successful treatment program within the jail, and probation has undertaken a number of housing-related issues to help their clients succeed and avoid again reduce that recidivism number. There are a couple of other Areas that have been looked at in terms of ways to lower the recidivism rate and help people improve their lives. And one is this concept of restorative justice. It's been tried in other parts of the country such as Providence, Rhode Island with a great deal of success and most recently here in Isla Vista as part of a collaborative neighborhood effort.

One of the areas that is very definitely worth looking at in addition to average daily population is admissions and while there are several routes by which someone can end up The admission numbers are the numbers of bookings per year into the jail. This is not the same as the number of unique individuals. A person could be arrested multiple times. But as you can see from this actual numbers between 2016 and 2019, the 21.3% decline in the number of admissions into the jail on an annual basis. And had this continued Again, this chart does not... The 2020 numbers reflect a projection. They do not reflect what actually occurred as a result of the COVID pandemic but the estimate was that by 2023 the number of admissions would have declined almost 45% from 2016 so there was a concerted effort already underway to attempt to reduce the number of people who were being brought into the jail system As I mentioned, in 2019 we began the Criminal Justice Mapping Project.

It included all of the criminal justice partners, the Sheriff's Office, the District Attorney, the Probation Department, the Public Defender's Office and the Department of Behavioral Wellness. And I need to take a moment because normally one might not think of the Behavioral Wellness Department as one of the criminal justice partners, but in fact they have been an absolute critical player in the acquisition of grants and the development of policies and treatment protocols both within and after incarceration.

The focus, as I mentioned earlier of the mapping project was to reduce the jail population and to divert people out of the criminal justice system. In the summer of 2019 we were visited by Professor Sarah Desmarais who is a nationally known expert in the field of risk assessment tools. She's from North Carolina State We actually brought her in to give us some advice on the assumption that possibly the diversion, the risk assessment tools that we were using might not be as effective as we want. And in fact she affirmed that what we were doing, the tools that we were using were more than adequate. She actually educated a lot of us on the fact that it isn't so much the tool itself but the importance of evaluating the context of the entire person and not just the tool, the risk assessment score in and of itself.

Also in the summer of 2019, the public defender Tracy McCougar acquired a grant through the Bureau of Justice Assistance called the Sixth Amendment Grant. It is overseen and administered by the Center for Court Innovation which is a national organization. They did a site visit and helped us develop a strategic plan in the fall of 2019 and they produced three basic goals. to improve the discovery process, to reduce the pretrial jail population and to make changes to the court calendar with the idea of increasing efficiency and moving people through the system more quickly and diverting them where appropriate.

As I mentioned, the criminal justice mapping group also was responsible for acquiring three grants Virtually simultaneously, and all three of which were focused on the issue of diversion. One was the State Hospital Diversion Grant, sometimes referred to as AB 1810. I'm not going to read the PowerPoint to you but its focus is really to develop or to find ways to people who are charged with felonies, arrested for felonies and in the county jail who were found incompetent to stand trial. That is their mental illness is so severe that they can't participate in their defense.

or who are in danger of becoming incompetent to stand trial, sometimes referred to as IST, are required by law to be sent to the state hospital for treatment and restoration to competency. The problem with that is very often the state hospital doesn't have enough beds and so the person sits in jail and languishes until such time as a bed becomes available. The purpose of the 1810 grant was to develop Community treatment locations. This is being overseen by Behavioral Wellness, where people can be treated and restored to competency in the community. What's not on this slide is an effort that the Sheriff is also undertaking referred to as jail-based competency treatment which also brings mental health treatment programs to incarcerated people.

The Credo 47 grant, sometimes referred to as Prop 47 was a diversion focused grant for people charged with minor crimes and it also brought one co-response team to the county which partnered a deputy sheriff and again a psychiatric social worker this actually The program that I mentioned that started in 2017 was really cobbled together out of existing resources. This made it a permanent acquisition.

And then the Sheriff most recently, in partnership with Behavioral Wellness acquired an additional grant from Vern Jagg from the U.S. Department of Justice and funded two additional co-response teams. In addition, Be Well is working with the cities of Santa Barbara and the city of Santa Maria to establish two more teams. All of this is again focused on the idea that persons who are suffering from mental illness need to be A, responded to in a different way and B if taken to someplace other than the jail.

One of our strategic goals as part of the criminal justice mapping process is to demonstrate that all three of these activities, when taken together, A, are good for the people with whom we come in contact and B, save the county money. With an idea that we can make these programs sustainable. All too often with these kinds of grants, they're very successful but when the grant comes to an end so does the program and one of our planning goals has been to determine how do we integrate this into the ongoing system beyond the life of the grant?

As I mentioned before, we got to a place where we were saying okay what's next? We had identified the problem. We had grants in place. We had strategic goals in partnership with CCI. We knew that we were on the verge of taking steps but we hadn't decided what those steps were and along came the pandemic and it decided for us The challenge in all of these discussions about diversion is that there is this balance between lowering the average daily population in the jail, letting people out either on pretrial supervision or alternative sentencing if they're convicted of a crime and maintaining public safety.

And this effort and we're going to walk through some data slides in a minute But it's been underway for just under 4 months. It is not clear that It is clear that we have lowered the jail population. The overall impact on public safety is less clear, but given that we are likely to continue in this sort of COVID model for a while, I think we will have opportunity to evaluate this.

As I mentioned, the primary way that people come into the jail is by physical arrest or by citations that are issued in lieu of arrest And which occasion, not more than occasion, about a quarter of the time end up going to warrant. But as you can see from this graphic that law enforcement activity around the county has down significantly in terms of arrests and citations. The reason for the Santa Maria number being as dramatic as it is, it combines arrest and citation. They did not disaggregate their data when they gave it to us. The other data points make a distinction between physical arrest and the issuance of citation. But in all cases, there's a significant reason why the jail population has dropped because the number of people being brought to the jail has dropped.

You can see from this chart that the jail population started to drop in mid-March. And has stayed in the 36 and 37% decline for the next three months. The reason for this is really three distinct reasons, the decrease in physical arrest that I mentioned previously, an increase in a number of people on pretrial release which was a direct result of a probation and sheriff probation and public defender project.

And the development of alternatives to jail such as Credo 47 and the crisis stabilization unit. The other part of the question, of course, is what about crime and what about public safety? If you look at the Part 1 totals on your graph, you will see that there was a 15% increase in Part 1 crime. But if you look at the graph just above that, the larceny theft Which is essentially a non-violent offense. You'll see that in terms of raw numbers, that Part 1 increase was driven by that predominantly.

And for people who may not know, Part 1 crime refers to the seven most serious felonies that are listed on there. Rape, robbery, murder, auto theft, assault, burglary and larceny theft. Part 2 crimes which are sometimes referred to as quality of life crimes, whether public intoxication disturbing the peace theft under a certain number of dollars. A decrease in activity. What's unclear is whether it's a decrease in criminal activity or a decrease in enforcement activity, and this is one of the areas that deserves further analysis but the number is significantly lower.

Ultimately, as we looked at each of the criminal justice partners in behavioral wellness were asked to answer three questions. What did you do in response to the COVID pandemic from your departmental perspective? What was the impact of that and what do you recommend doing in the future? And three, in terms of ongoing jail reduction strategies, three broad categories emerged From those discussions. One is the expansion of the capacity for pretrial diversion and supervision.

Second is the improvement of technological capacity in terms of both the ability to exchange information among the Criminal Justice Department, as well as move people through the criminal justice system in a more efficient way and get their case adjudicated or get them under supervision and not in the jail. And then lastly is a change in sentencing structure.

But ultimately the strategic question that's been raised by all of the criminal justice partners, all of whom support conceptually the notion of diversion. The big question is divert to where? It's always been the question as we talked about, where to divert mentally ill people. The county has undertaken a number of steps to develop mental health treatment capacity and increase our ability to do that. To increase the number of treatment programs for people who are battling substance abuse and other issues.

But that has to be the underlying question when we seek to balance this question of lowering the jail population and maintaining public safety. As I mentioned, there were 15 recommendations, 7 of which were a function Directly a function of the pandemic response, and eight of which were recommendations or suggestions from the criminal justice partners. I'm not going to read each one of them to you but with regards to the capacity for pretrial supervision number 14 the review of out-of-custody complaints The District Attorney's Office estimates that there are currently about 1,700 citations that have been written in lieu of arrest since the pandemic began. None of those have gone to the court system yet because the courts have been closed but one of the suggestions is that we review those citations with an eye on two things.

One is which ones can be adjudicated either without going to court and certainly without people ending up in jail. And B, a review of the section numbers that are cited for to say which of these sections should we really focus on continuing to cite as opposed to make physical arrests for? And I suspect that the criminal justice leaders will each probably address a portion of that.

The next area was the improvement of technological capacity. I would remind the board that for several years there has been a Criminal Justice Data Committee, it's overseen by Chief Heitman and the Probation Department. They have been focused very much on trying to improve And consolidate our county technological capacity as it pertains to the exchange of criminal justice information.

And to bring behavioral wellness into the fold on that, there are some HIPAA issues that we're trying to work through. But the ability to exchange information, the foundational piece for that exists and a recommendation is to strengthen the capacity of that existing committee. And then the third area is changes in sentencing structure. And I've already mentioned the review of the 1,700 citations and that number is probably a little bit greater.

So for next steps in terms of where we might want to go, I would call your attention to the second bullet point There are, and it's mentioned both in the board letter and in the attachment. We have a number of groups that work in this arena now. We have the CCP Work Group, we have Stepping Up, we have the Criminal Justice Planning Group. All of these groups exist. They work through various areas of policy and the assignment of recommendations to each of those Their feasibility or to recommend next steps for action would be I think very appropriate. And again, we don't have to create a new committee or a new group to do that.

I would propose that we bring the Center for Court Innovation strategic report. I think this board would be very interested in the work that they have done and we could come back at a later date with more information about them. And then review the maintain and modify the existing COVID protocols as appropriate. And again, it appears as though that the COVID protocols are going to stay in place at least for the near term future.

And so we will have the opportunity to gather more data. And with that, I'm going to stop and I can either answer questions about the report or we have all five of the criminal justice partners that are on tap would like to make statements to the board and answer questions. So I'll leave it to the board to decide how we proceed.

Well why don't we have... Thank you very much for the report. That was comprehensive and detailed and appreciate that. Are there questions for Mr. Mielecki at this point? Supervisor Hartman.

Yes, I had two questions. Could you talk about strengthening the capacity of the Criminal Justice Data Committee? Elaborate a little bit more what you mean by that and my next question is restorative justice and I just want to get it on the record because if we're going to hear from our criminal justice partners, I really believe that that is a very important It reflects a philosophy that I think is a very important one and how we can, as you mentioned we started that in Ivy.

People come in sullen and they leave feeling more connected to their community. And that is really important and I think we can expand that throughout the county and so those are my questions.

So I'll start with restorative justice, which has actually been part of the national discussion for a decade. The idea being that unlike the traditional criminal justice system which really focuses on the offense committed by the suspect and that suspect's relationship to a violation of the law, restorative justice seeks to bring the victim in In some cases, the victim and the suspect may be directly interfaced with each other. In other cases, the victim helps sort of define what it would take to make them feel whole again, to make them feel put back together.

There's been some interesting studies that have come out of Yale and Brown University about people who are victims and the likelihood of them being repeat victims, in part because they end up not feeling as though the system really cared about them or what happened to them. And there's a whole dynamic that comes into place. The concept of restorative justice has been successful in the places that it has tried.

It is not without challenges in terms of bringing the right people together, in terms of developing a protocol. Isla Vista by all accounts That program seems to have been very successful. There are always questions about how does restorative justice scale up? And so when I was a police chief down in LA County, we did use a version of it and it was also very successful again because there's sort of an interconnectedness. So I think it's worth pursuing.

With regards to the Criminal Justice Data Committee, they have really done some incredible work in terms of from a technical capacity and please don't ask me to explain it because I'm not sure that I can. But what I do know is that the success that they've had has really been a function And so they're pulled in other directions. I don't think the end and talking to and talking to chief Heitman, they just really need somebody who's who's basically assigned to that project, to help pull those together on a daily basis.

And I'll let her talk in more detail about what she needs but there's no funding request attached to that so there is a methodology to do that under the existing framework.

I'm sorry you don't need money for the person to do that?

Chief Heitman's going to tell you in a few minutes whether I remembered our conversation correctly, but

yes. It's a little preview there. Are there other questions for Mr. Malikian? Supervisor

Williams? Could you put up your list again there, the two slides back and one more back? The probation department and sheriff's custody

As they were going through the list at the beginning of the pandemic, and they were going through the list. Of who was in custody and would be suitable for release given the unique set of circumstances that they found themselves in. And they selected people to be released from jail. Some of those were pre-trial some of those may have been sentenced I don't have a breakdown on that part of it.

But it really involved a sharing of information that hadn't been occurring pre-COVID.

Got it.

Any questions from colleagues in Santa Maria? Okay, the next person who will be presenting is Sheriff Bill Brown and I believe we have him via Zoom.

And I just want to tell you, Mr. Chair, at some point I'm going to have to jump out for five minutes to vote on a CSAC committee sometime soon. We'll see you back when you're done.

Sheriff Brown?

Thank you, Chair Hart and members of the board and members of the public. It's a pleasure to be with you today. I wanted to start some remarks to follow up with what Mr. Mielecki Said specifically zeroing in on not just what we in the sheriff's office have done. To address the jail population in the wake of COVID pandemic, but what we have done since 2007 since I was sworn into office as we've moved forward over the last 13 and a half years and what we have been able to accomplish in that regard.

We have worked tirelessly to reduce the number And we've worked to do that through a number of ways, through improved policing efforts. That includes everything from mental health crisis intervention training for all of our deputies and our dispatchers as well as community policing initiatives one of which is the Isla Vista foot patrol diversion from jail. As you just heard with restorative justice programs as an example community resource deputies, and mental health co-response teams.

We've also worked to reduce recidivism through improved incarceration with a focus on reentry and rehabilitation. We have expanded the Sheriff's Treatment Program to include life skills training vocational and educational components in addition to its core alcohol and drug treatment messaging In addition to that, we have initiated a medication-assisted treatment program for people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol and utilize our partners at WellPath to add a medical component to this, a treatment component to it as well.

And as you just heard about the collaborative discharging planning that goes on with other county agencies. We've also improved post release supervision of offenders through the establishment and management of two day reporting centers that are resources for parolees who are returning to Santa Barbara County from state prison, through alternatives to custody and our electronic monitoring program.

And in working collaboratively with the probation department. So how has that manifested itself in terms impact on the jail population. I'd like to compare for you the month of July in 2007, 2019 and this year. In July of 2007, the average daily population in the Santa Barbara County Jail was 1,268 inmates. In July of 2019, the average population was 898. And that 898 includes 91 inmates who were retained by the Sheriff's Office as a result of AB 109. In other words, these are state inmates who would have under the previous pre-realignment situation been sent to state prisons. So even with those additional 91 inmates that we didn't have before, we still saw a 29% drop in inmate population And then this month, July of 2020 for the first 15 days at least one through 15 our average daily population is 578.

That includes 72 AB 109 inmates and those inmates still represent a 36% drop from that previous number in 2007. Since COVID-19 struck us, we and the Sheriff's Office have taken some extraordinary steps in alliance with our other criminal justice partners to even limit further the population of the jail. We extended early releases from our jail for sentenced inmates from 21 day early releases to 30 day early releases.

And bear in mind that way the law is structured, there is a 50% good time work time credit that is given to inmates who are in custody. So for example if someone is serving one year gets sentenced to one year in the county jail with their good time work time credit they will only serve six months in the county jail and under this program if they're Qualified for it, they would have only served five months. They'd have been released 30 days earlier than the six months.

We've also increased our ROVAR assessment score. That's the risk of re-offense cut off that we would use to release an inmate from what had previously been a 6 out of 10 and we bumped it up to a 7 out of 10 only for nonviolent inmates. We increased our pre-trial own recognizance releases, doing that in partnership as mentioned with probation and the courts.

And we have adhered to the Justice Council of California's I'm sorry, the Judicial Council of California's emergency rule four which was the $0 bail which provided a bail schedule that for almost all For many felonies and for all misdemeanors essentially required no bail, no dollar bail, a $0 bail for releasees. The result of all of that was that 476 people have been released early or as an alternative release since March the 19th, 476. Of those 476, 55 of them were 12% plus have been re-arrested and rebooked for a total of 75 new offenses.

And let me just walk you through some of the more concerning ones that have come back to us. One person was arrested three times, one was arrested four times, and one was arrested five times as a result of multiple releases primarily attributable to the $0 bail schedule. Two offenders were released on their original arrests for auto theft, and then they were re-arrested for auto theft.