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Mayor London Breed Closes County Jail in SF

Effective September 5, it will be the third jail that SF has closed in the last 10 years.
By - posted 8/26/2020 No Comment

Mayor London N. Breed and Sheriff Paul Miyamoto announced on August 25th, that County Jail #4, located on the 7th floor of the Hall of Justice, will close effective Saturday, September 5, 2020.

Other San Francisco county jails currently have the capacity to absorb additional people in custody. People from County Jail #4 will be rehoused in either County Jail #5 in San Bruno (rated for 768 beds) or County Jail #2 at 425-7th Street in San Francisco (rated for 392 beds).

Last year, Mayor Breed announced a plan to move incarcerated people out of the jail no later than July 2021. In May, the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance authored by Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer that moved the proposed closure date to no later than November 1, 2020. Built-in 1961, County Jail #4 is the third jail that the City will have closed since 2010.

“San Francisco has led the nation in advancing justice reforms for decades, and the closure of County Jail #4 is part of our broader efforts to shift resources towards alternatives to incarceration that are more effective at creating a safer society for us all,” said Mayor Breed. “Thanks to Sheriff Miyamoto’s leadership, we are able to move forward on closing the jail earlier than we originally planned.

We need to continue to reform our criminal justice system to prevent crime in the first place, end the use of incarceration as an answer to social problems, and reduce recidivism. We are all safer if we invest in measures that address the root causes of the majority of criminal behavior. This includes keeping up our programs to divert people to services instead of incarceration, and offering pretrial diversion for those who do not pose a danger to themselves or others with our partners in the court and criminal justice system.”

“When I became Sheriff, I committed to closing County Jail #4. It had outlived its useful life and was seismically unsafe, putting the people in custody, Sheriff’s staff, contractors and the visiting public at risk,” said Sheriff Miyamoto.

The closure of County Jail #4 is related to Mayor Breed’s ongoing efforts to redirect funding from the City’s law enforcement agencies and invest in San Francisco’s African-American community. The Mayor’s proposed budget acknowledges structural inequities resulting from generations of disinvestment and reinvests $120 million in funds over two years, predominantly from the City’s law enforcement departments, towards efforts to repair the legacy of racially disparate policies on health, housing, and economic outcomes for African-Americans.

Read the full press release.