ADA Compliance Should Not Mean More Jail Cells

A unanimous vote by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors to approve a $167 million jail expansion — a project county leaders say is needed to satisfy an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) lawsuit filed years ago — is drawing sharp pushback from local advocates who argue the county is investing in the wrong kind of beds.

The most prominent critique came this week from Gina Rodarte Quiroz, a Santa Barbara community advocate, policy consultant, and Families ACT board member, who laid out her objections in a letter published by the Santa Barbara Independent. Her central argument: if the county can finance $167 million in jail infrastructure, it should be able to find the resources to build the psychiatric treatment beds that would keep many people with serious mental illness out of jail in the first place.

What the Board Approved

The Board of Supervisors approved the jail expansion unanimously, with county leaders framing the project as a necessary response to ADA litigation over conditions at the county jail. Officials have argued the expansion is required to bring the facility into compliance and improve conditions for incarcerated people with disabilities.

But the scope of the project — specifically the number of new beds — remains under debate even among those who accept the compliance rationale. Quiroz and other advocates contend that ADA obligations can be met without maximizing jail capacity, and that the county is using a legal mandate as cover for a broader buildout.

During presentations on the project, county officials repeatedly described the expansion as "more humane," according to Quiroz's account. Her response: "Wouldn't it be more humane to not criminalize our most vulnerable population and prioritize affordable housing and psychiatric treatment beds?"

Jails as De Facto Mental Health Facilities

The heart of the criticism is a dynamic familiar to families across the Central Coast: county jails have become default mental health institutions. According to Quiroz, individuals experiencing psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other serious psychiatric disabilities often remain incarcerated for weeks or months while waiting for placement in a psychiatric treatment program — and jail settings frequently worsen their conditions.

That bottleneck has consequences beyond the individuals affected. Quiroz warned that people with disabilities awaiting transfer to a higher level of care must receive priority attention under the new plan, or the county risks another year of noncompliance with the state — potentially triggering additional fines that would cost taxpayers millions more on top of the $167 million already committed.

"When will we invest in evidence-based programs that actually rehabilitate, instead of the revolving-door incarceration?" she wrote. "If incarceration is the answer, why do the same people keep coming back?"

A Question of Priorities, Not Compliance

Advocates are careful to distinguish between the ADA mandate itself — which they do not dispute — and the county's choice about how to meet it. "ADA compliance is important. Every person deserves humane and accessible conditions," Quiroz wrote. "But compliance should be the floor, not the ceiling, of our ambitions."

The critique cuts to a long-running tension in Santa Barbara County budgeting: capital projects for correctional facilities can be financed at nine figures, while community treatment capacity — psychiatric beds, supportive housing, crisis response — has chronically lagged behind need. Families and behavioral health advocates in the county have argued for years that the gap forces law enforcement and jail staff to serve as first-line mental health providers, a role neither is equipped to play.

"At the end of the day, we can frame the expansion as more 'humane,' but it is still a jail," Quiroz wrote. "History will not judge us by how efficiently we expanded our jails. It will judge us by how we treated our most vulnerable. The question before us is simple: when given the choice between cages and care, why do we keep choosing cages?"

What Comes Next

With the expansion approved, attention now shifts to implementation — and to whether the county pairs the buildout with meaningful investments in diversion and treatment. Key open questions for residents and taxpayers include:

• How many beds, and what kind. The bed count for the expansion remains contested, and supervisors will face decisions about how much of the new capacity serves ADA-required functions versus general population growth.
• Transfer timelines. Advocates are demanding priority handling for incarcerated people with disabilities who are waiting for psychiatric placement, both on humanitarian grounds and to avoid further state noncompliance penalties.
• Parallel treatment investment. Whether the Board of Supervisors will commit funding comparable in urgency — if not in scale — to community psychiatric beds, affordable housing, and evidence-based rehabilitation programs.

For Santa Barbara residents, the stakes are both fiscal and moral. The $167 million price tag will be felt in the county budget for years, and the risk of additional state fines raises the true cost further if the underlying compliance failures aren't resolved. Meanwhile, the population most affected — people with serious mental illness caught in the criminal justice system — will continue cycling through the jail's doors unless the county addresses what Quiroz calls the "underlying failure" that turned the facility into a de facto psychiatric institution in the first place.

The Board of Supervisors' unanimous vote settled the question of whether the jail will expand. What remains unresolved is whether Santa Barbara County will treat ADA compliance as the beginning of its obligations to vulnerable residents — or the end.