Santa Clara County came up with recommendations for alternatives to incarceration. Some advocates say it doesn’t go far enough

Former Stoneleigh Fellow Raj Jayadev spoke to The Mercury News about new Santa Clara County recommends to reduce the number of individuals incarcerated in its jails.

Santa Clara County has released a slew of recommendations to help reduce the jail population — focusing heavily on mental health efforts — but some criminal justice reform advocates assert they don’t go far enough and won’t create any meaningful change.

The recommendations — presented to the board this past week — ranged from reducing the time people spend in custody by adding more people to conduct mental health assessments and creating a less criminally focused mental health facility to increasing access to social support systems for individuals leaving jail.

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