Jail Expansion Put On Hold

The Sacramento Main Jail and the fence around the area of a planned expansion, which is now a parking lot, seen Jan. 1. Seth Patterson, OBSERVER Sacramento County has put on hold plans to expand its main jail so a third party can reevaluate the nearly $1 billion project. County Deputy Executive Eric Jones said the Main Jail Annex project is paused until a third-party review of the work done so far by Nacht and Lewis, the county’s architectural consultant, is conducted. Jones said the pause is “based on a variety of issues that were found in some of the [consultant’s] reports.” The third-party review, which Jones said will be contracted through a competitive bidding process, will reevaluate the project and confirm that its conceptual plans are directly tied to the Mays Consent Decree, a 2018 court-approved settlement that requires the county to comply with constitutional standards and the Americans with Disabilities Act at its two jails. In a joint letter to the county in November, Decarcerate Sacramento, the American Civil Liberties Union of Sacramento and more than a dozen other organizations and architects denounced the expansion plans. “Constructing a $925 million jail annex is not only unnecessary, but would...