Santa Rita Jail is a

county jail A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correct ...

located in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

Alameda County Alameda County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,682,353, making it the 7th-most populous county in the state and 21st most populous nationally. The county seat is Oakland. Alam ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, and operated by the

Alameda County Sheriff's Office The Alameda County Sheriff's Office (ACSO) is a law enforcement agency serving Alameda County, California. ACSO is accredited through the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), the American Correctional Association (ACA ...

. With a design capacity of 3489, Santa Rita is one of the largest prisons in the United States and larger than many California state prisons. The jail is adjacent to

Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin The Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin (FCI Dublin) is a low-security United States federal prison for female inmates in Dublin, California. The facility also has an adjacent satellite prison camp housing minimum-security female offenders ...

, on the

Camp Parks Parks Reserve Forces Training Area (PRFTA), commonly known as Camp Parks, is a United States Army base located in Dublin, California, that is currently an active military and training center for U.S. Army Reserve personnel to be used in case o ...

Reserve Forces Training Area. Santa Rita has one of the highest rates of in-custody deaths for county jails in California, and has been the recipient of numerous lawsuits and class-action lawsuits regarding jail conditions and medical care. As with most jails, the majority of people incarcerated in Santa Rita are in pre-trial detention and have not been convicted of a crime.

History and facilities

The original Santa Rita Jail opened in 1947 as a replacement for Alameda's County Prison Farm. It was built on 1000 acres of Camp Schumacher, a World War II military base near the current site. By 1983, overcrowding had become an issue, and plans were established for the construction of the current $172 million facility, which opened in 1989. Funding for the jail's construction was obtained through state bonds as well as local county matching funds. The current facility is laid out in a modern decentralized "campus" design, similar to many modern prisons, one-half mile long by one-quarter mile wide. The facility has 18 separate, self-contained housing units, a "core" building containing central booking, release and administration, and a service building containing the laundry, commissary, kitchen and warehouses. Santa Rita is rated to house up to 3,489 people, making it as large or larger than many California state prisons. It is the third largest jail in California and the fifth largest in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, and is considered a "mega-jail". An automatic robotic cart system moves all meals, laundry, commissary items, supplies and garbage through the jail, allowing maximal restriction of prisoner movement throughout the facility. A 1.2

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...

peak-power solar array was installed in Spring 2002 on the roofs of the housing units, supplying nearly one half of the jail's power demand during daylight hours. In May 2006, the Chevron Energy Solutions deployed a 1-

fuel cell system that generates 8,000,000 kWh of electricity and of waste heat (50% and 18% of Jail's needs, respectively) from natural gas.

Inmate Conditions

Santa Rita Jail became known for dangerous conditions for inmates. At least 68 inmates died between 2011 and 2020, largely from suicides and overdoses. An investigation by KTVU found that for the years 2014-2019, Santa Rita Jail's death rate was 50% higher than Los Angeles County (13.6 to 8.9 deaths per 1,000 inmates) and was the highest in the Bay Area. The investigation noted that the use of isolated confinement exacerbated mental health issues and may have driven more inmates to suicide. In 2018, inmates filed a lawsuit alleging insufficient mental health care. A

US Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...

report released April 2021 found that the jail had become the county's largest provider of mental health services, and that its inadequate provision of care of inmates constituted a violation of their civil rights. In February 2022, a federal judge approved a settlement calling for improved mental health services and staffing, to the objections of some inmates and advocacy groups. The US Department of Justice would monitor the settlement for six years.

Bomb range

The

bomb range is located behind the Santa Rita Jail. It has come into the public eye by being featured in many episodes of MythBusters, and named as their #1 favorite location in their Top 12 Favorite Locations special. The MythBusters will often use this bomb range to safely and legally test myths regarding explosions, projectiles, and many other myths that cannot be tested otherwise without endangering civilians, made possible by the large, open landmass that gave them plenty of room to set their tests up while giving a large distance to stand away from the blasts. In the special episode, Adam Savage praised the flexibility of the bomb range by rhetorically asking "What ''can't'' you do there?!" On December 6, 2011, while conducting an experiment on the effectiveness of various projectiles when fired out of a cannon, a '' MythBusters'' television crew sent a cannonball through the side of a house and into a minivan in a nearby Dublin neighborhood. The projectile had missed its intended target and instead soared , striking a house and leaving a hole, before striking the roof of another house and smashing through a window of a parked minivan.

Cultural references

* Major portions of

Tom Wolfe Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018)Some sources say 1931; ''The New York Times'' and Reuters both initially reported 1931 in their obituaries before changing to 1930. See and was an American author and journalist widely ...

's novel ''

A Man in Full ''A Man in Full'' is the second novel by Tom Wolfe, published on November 12, 1998, by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. It is set primarily in Atlanta, with a significant portion of the story also transpiring in the East Bay region of the San Francisco B ...

'' (1998) take place at Santa Rita Jail, but the facility depicted in the novel was the pre-1989 jail which used World War II-era barrack-style buildings. * The Oakland based hip-hop group

The Coup The Coup is an American hip hop band from Oakland, California. Their music is an amalgamation of influences, including funk, punk, hip hop, and soul. Frontman Boots Riley's revolutionarily-charged lyrics rank The Coup as a renowned political ...

has a track titled "Santa Rita Weekend" on their 1994 album, ''

Genocide & Juice ''Genocide & Juice'' is the second studio album by American hip hop group the Coup. It was released on Wild Pitch Records on October 13, 1994. It peaked at number 27 on the '' Billboard'' Heatseekers Albums chart, as well as number 62 on the Top ...

''. * In October 1967, the singer

Joan Baez Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...

, her mother, and nearly 70 other women were arrested and incarcerated in the Santa Rita Jail for actions during an anti-draft rally. At the jail, where Baez spent eleven days (according to Baez' memoir, she had been sentenced to 45 days, but jail officials abruptly released her early, when they received word that a press conference was being planned for her scheduled release date), she met David Harris, an anti-draft activist whom she would later marry. * M.C. Hammer was arrested February 21, 2013, in Dublin for allegedly obstructing an officer in the performance of his duties and resisting an officer (according to "stop and identify" statutes). Hammer claims he was a victim of

racial profiling Racial profiling or ethnic profiling is the act of suspecting, targeting or discriminating against a person on the basis of their ethnicity, religion or nationality, rather than on individual suspicion or available evidence. Racial profiling involv ...

by the police. He stated an officer pulled out his gun and randomly asked him: "Are you on parole or probation?" Hammer stated that as he handed over his ID, the officer reached inside the car and tried to pull him out. Police in Dublin, east of Oakland, said Hammer was in a vehicle with expired

registration Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...

and he was not the registered owner. "After asking Hammer who the registered owner was, he became very argumentative and refused to answer the officer's questions," police spokesman Herb Walters typed in an e-mail to

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

. Hammer was booked and released from Santa Rita Jail. A court date was scheduled and police have until then to decide on any charges. Hammer

tweeted Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

that he wasn't bitter and considered what happened "a teachable moment".

References

External links