KPBS Midday Edition

Conditions At San Diego County Jails Frighten Inmates

By Pat Finn / Producer , Mark Sauer / Host, The Roundtable

Published April 14, 2020 at 11:37 AM PDT

This story was published more than 4 years ago.

The San Diego Central Jail on Front Street, August 7, 2018.

Inmates in San Diego County's seven jails face conditions they say are filthy and that make them especially vulnerable to COVID-19

How are San Diego County's seven jails dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic? The answers depend on who's speaking and differ markedly.

San Diego County Sheriff’s Department officials told reporters for The San Diego Union-Tribune that in each jail, testing for the virus is being done, guards and inmates are given cloth masks, sick inmates are evaluated by medical professionals, and hygiene kits are issued to new inmates.

The inmates, however, say many of them are locked down 22 hours a day, no one collects or cleans the masks, none of the common surfaces is wiped down or disinfected, there is no soap in the bathrooms, it takes at least a week to see a doctor and sick inmates are placed in the general population where healthier inmates have to clean up after older and sicker ones.

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As of last week, the Sheriff's Department had tested 62 of the more than 5,000 inmates in detention for the virus. Five jail employees and three inmates tested positive.

In addition, a sheriff’s department employee told reporters there is no consistency in the way COVID-19 protection practices are observed, with each of the four shifts at each jail doing their own thing.

Freelance reporter Kelly Davis, who reported on this story with Jeff McDonald for The San Diego Union-Tribune, joins Midday Edition on Tuesday.

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Pat Finn

Pat Finn previously served as a producer for KPBS Midday Edition and KPBS Evening Edition. Finn began her career in broadcasting at KTLA and KCET in Los Angeles. In 1979 she became KPBS’ Public Information Director, then Director of Advertising and Promotion, Program Director, and Director of Broadcasting. She oversaw the station’s local and national productions, including the one-hour documentary Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar, and Child Protective Services, a one-hour look inside the San Diego County agency responsible for the welfare of at risk children. Both programs also aired on public television stations nationwide. Finn has earned honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

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Mark Sauer

A newspaperman for more than 30 years, Mark Sauer joined KPBS in October 2010 and previously served as the host of the KPBS Roundtable. He spent 27 years as a reporter and editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune after stints at The Houston Post and at two papers in his native Michigan. A features/human-interest writer in the UT's Currents section for many years, Mark also spent about a third of his UT career as an editor and reporter on the Metro Desk. He has covered a wide range of events: Wild fires in Southern California and Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast; Super Bowls and the World Series; foster care and child-abuse issues; the Roman Catholic Diocese's sexual-abuse scandal and bankruptcy; royal visits of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Princess Diana; Republican and Democratic national conventions; high-profile criminal trials; and many other stories, from the silly to the sublime. Along the way, he interviewed everyone from presidents to pan-handlers. His work exposing the false accusations and prosecutions of several San Diegans for murder, rape and child abuse garnered Pulitzer Prize nominations and many regional and local journalism awards, including Best in the West, the Sol Price Award for Responsible Journalism and several San Diego and California bar-association awards. Mark has a degree in journalism from Michigan State University.

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