12 Days After Latest Inmate Death at the Marin County Jail, Marin Supervisors Vote To Endorse Newsom's Pro-Carceral "Get Tough(er) on Drug Users" Proposition 1

Marin County's Newest Policy Star Lends a Pretty Face to the County's Support for Newsom's Frankenstein Ballot Proposition. But how many lies can lurk in just one ballot proposition? Lots!

Last Tuesday, one of the County's newest policy hires, UC Berkeley Goldman School alumna Talia Smith, gave a presentation of Governor Newsom's Proposition 1, with its $6.4 billion bond measure, to the Marin County Board of Supervisors. Ms. Smith is now an administrative analyst with the County's revamped Executive Office (formerly the County Administrator's Office) and she brings an ingénue's charm to the role. It is a quality that Marin County's newly contracted and very costly PR consulting firm must no doubt appreciate.

Smith is viewed as so charming by the Board that, throughout the presentation, it was apparently sufficient for the Zoom camera to remain only on her — and not on any of the slides to which Smith smilingly referred with a continual "next slide, please!" For her part, Smith seemed wholly unaware or unconcerned that the slides themselves were not visible to the meeting's largest audience on Zoom. Tuesday meetings at Marin Civic Center always present an element of pure, if unintentional, comedy, and Smith's presentation was no exception.

Pay No Attention To The Missing Slides. Or Newsom's last-minute changes.

But maybe the invisibility of the slides was intentional, as the presentation from the County Executive's office was so sparse. To be fair to Smith: what leeway would a county staffer have to give a more accurate analysis of the Governor's pet proposition? Word on the street was that even nonprofits were threatened with retaliation by Newsom's office for publicly questioning Proposition 1 — after Newsom, at the last minute, pulled a bait-and-switch on what the long-discussed $6 billion bond proposal would actually deliver.

How was Talia Smith expected to discuss that and keep her $166k/year position?

For five months, advocates and lawmakers had been promised that the bond issue that was eventually repackaged into Proposition 1 would focus on housing and high-quality, community-focused, voluntary treatment. But Newsom's last-minute changes stripped language that had prohibited the money from being used on involuntary confinements for people suffering from mental illness or substance use disorder. (Or, let's face it, anyone who might look like they fit that ever-expanding type to a police officer or a "mental health team" increasingly made up of people with shockingly little clinical training – and sometimes no clinical training at all.)

In other words, we're being sold a bond which will only increase California's largely unrecognized sky-high levels of “involuntary treatment” in carceral and other institutional settings, which has long been proven not to solve homelessness or substance use disorders, but to exacerbate them. Thus, Californians will foot the bill for Newsom's "plan" which will in turn cost even more money to try to fix later.

Just to be clear: the proposed “building” part of Proposition 1 will not even start until 2026. So where will the mentally ill and substance use disorder sufferers be remanded during the in-between time before the provisional, also-carceral "involuntary treatment centers" are built? Why, the jails, of course. In Marin, that means the very place which now has a higher per-inmate death rate than Rikers Island.

Comedy, Meet Tragedy:

Bear in mind that pro-carceral Proposition 1 was presented to, and endorsed , by Marin County's Board of Supervisors on February 6, 2024 — just 12 days after Felicia Wyatt died at the Marin County Jail, the third inmate to die in that 250-person jail in less than six months. And Wyatt’s death occurred approximately one year after the County permitted the jail to implement its "involuntary psych med program."

The Supervisors didn't merely refuse to acknowledge Ms. Wyatt's death during their meeting. In refusing to acknowledge Ms. Wyatt at all, they denied any consideration that her death was related to either the jail's new "involuntary psych med program" — or the needlessness of San Rafael Police arresting a young mother on drug charges and remanding her to that deadly jail. And they then shamelessly voted to endorse a ballot proposition that will undoubtedly result in even more deaths in jails, and in other non-transparent carceral institutions.

Policy wunderkind Talia Smith discussed in her presentation the expansion of Proposition 1 to exercise additional carceral powers over those suffering from substance use disorder, but she also made zero reference to the costs of such policy, such as the fatal jail conditions in which Ms. Wyatt found herself trapped. As pointed out by several people who watched the meeting on Zoom, the favored Talia Smith, with her close relationship to San Rafael Police and Marin County Sheriff Office, is, unlike Ms. Wyatt, unlikely to ever be the victim of the pro-carceral policies that Smith has routinely touted as beneficial to the County. But maybe Smith and all the County administrators should, on their own, have to spend at least two nights in the County jail, or even a night in a County-partnered homeless shelter, so that they might know better what they are promoting.

Advocates Blindsided by Newsom's Last-Minute Switcheroo; League of Women Voters Outraged

The senior attorney for Disability Rights California, Samuel Jain, was blunt in describing his group's reaction to Newsom's last-minute Proposition 1 changes: "We are horrified." I reached out to numerous researchers, mental health workers, advocates, and attorneys in the last week who echoed Jain's horror. It is probably an indication of how under-reported Proposition 1 has been that all but one expert/advocate whom I contacted called me back within less than 24 hours to relate, in considerable detail, and with no shortage of patience for my many questions, their concerns about Proposition 1.

Each provided compelling arguments and data. Clare Cortright, an attorney and Policy Director of Cal Voices, which began in 1946 as NorCal MHA, related not only the background of Proposition 1 and its relationship to similar legislation in California, but the extreme circumstances faced by those surviving in California's many psych wards and other institutionalized settings.

(Cortright's descriptions were not unfamiliar to me: as a former UCSF Emergency Department tech, I had witnessed abusive treatment of patients placed in restraints and/or on involuntary psych holds, even though UCSF is generally considered an exemplary, "world-class" hospital. I am glad that Ms. Cortright was permitted airtime on a KQED panel this past week, and I urge you to listen to the recording.)

Those last-minute changes to the Proposition, largely unreported in California's established media, transformed the promised housing element entirely, creating a singularly unwieldy proposition that was, by design, much too complicated for most voters to understand. The publication CalMatters is a notable exception, having published both a scathing article on the last-minute changes, and a subsequent article on the massive $14.2 million campaign war chest Newsom amassed in support of the proposition.

Newsom's changes created a largely pro-carceral and pro-”involuntary treatment” proposition, with 2/3 of the previously promised housing funding redirected to locked-down mental institutions and "treatment beds." This bait-and-switch outraged not just mental health advocates, but even the normally staid League of Women's Voters, a group that you might think has "seen it all", having born witness to decades of bizarre machinations out of Sacramento.

Strange Bedfellows and an Unquestioned Claim:

Newsom's proposition is so bad that both the staid LWV and the conservative "Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association" are urging a no vote. Along the left spectrum: Humans Rights Watch attorneys such as John Raphling are platforming others' calls for a no vote, as is the entire group at Disability Rights California.

Proposition 1 is polling at approximately 60-70%, and is expected to pass based on a series of questionable claims promoted by Governor Newsom's office and echoed at the Marin County level by Talia Smith and “Behavioral Health Services Director” Todd Schirmer. The most dominant of these claims is one so firmly entrenched by the news media that I myself did not question it until February 6, when I watched Ms. Smith's curiously meager presentation to the Board, and started to call researchers. It is the claim of a "lack of treatment beds."

Meet Rob Wipond:

One of the many experts who answered my calls is investigative reporter Rob Wipond, a genial Canadian who wrote Your Consent Is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced Treatment, and Abusive Guardianships. Wipond's subject matter is harrowing, and so it was a pleasant surprise that he could discuss the topic in good humor. But Wipond also wrote an excellent 2023 article in the Los Angeles Times that makes an argument that is not sufficently discussed in most media coverage. In the article, Wipond addresses both the false narrative that there is a "lack" of treatment beds stemming from 1967's Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, and the claim that asylum closures created a shortage of beds for detentions.

Wipond points to two investigations based in, or centering on, California:

The first is a landmark 2020 study out of UCLA that shows that per capita psych detentions across 22 US states had risen at two to three times the population growth. That rate of psychiatric detention is in itself many more times the rate in the UK and in comparable countries in Western Europe. That data does not imply any “lack” of treatment beds.

The second is the work of NYU professor Alex Barnard, author of Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness. Barnard has shown that the numbers for psych detentions in California are likely much higher than reported, and offers San Francisco as an example. As Wipond summarizes: "In 2021, the county reported 1,487 such detentions, but an evaluation of health institutions estimated the number to be about nine times higher: 13,065."

How are psych detentions increasing at such a rate if we have such a perilous “lack of treatment beds”? That's a question that will likely go unanswered by the Marin County Board of Supervisors as they continue to support Proposition 1.

But Wipond's larger point is vital: we should not assume that an increase in psychiatric detentions will result in improved patient outcomes. He cites a 2019 review of scientific literature showing little evidence that coercive interventions result in better outcomes. In fact, they often create more harm.

Wipond reasons that it's not difficult to understand why forced treatment results in negative outcomes. "While some detentions evolve into a collaborative process between patient and doctor, forced treatment is often brutal, involving threats, security gards, stripping, restraints, and heavy tranquilization. For some people, forced sedation and severe adverse drug effects — such as diabetes and movement disorders — can continue torturously for years under assisted outpatient treatment or conservatorships. There are many who want help but choose homelessness over such care, which is why many reseachers advocate for noncoercive, supportive housing."

Why aren't we hearing more voices like Wipond's or Barnard’s in this discussion? Why is Proposition 1 such a rushed process?

Newsom's TV Ad Roll-Out Makes Big Claims to Help Veterans. You'd Best Kick The Tires On That Claim:

The official advertising campaign for Proposition 1 started on January 30, 2024 with a seven-figure TV ad buy, prominently featuring Newsom's promises that the proposition would house military veterans. But the bill is actually designed to help only a tiny fraction of California's most vulnerable veterans, and the carceral, involuntary treatment permitted by Proposition 1 will likely harm more veterans than its minimal assistance will help.

Further, we have seen too many programs that promise to address the needs of veterans yet still allow vets, such as Jimmy Sanders, to die on the street after having been abused by the very state programs that were handed obscene amounts of money to deliver services to them. Mr. Sanders died in a tent in San Rafael last year, having been made gravely disabled by conditions at the police-run "SSA" internment camp that was heralded by the local Pacific Sun as "kinder, gentler."

Mr. Sanders' place of death is situated less than four miles from Redwood High School, from which Governor Newsom graduated in 1985, having been recognized in the yearbook as "Most Stylish". Efforts to obtain help for Mr. Sanders in the years before his death from elected representatives, including Governor Newsom, were not answered. Do veterans actually matter to Governor Newsom, or are they just a prop for him to use?

Gavin Newsom, “Most Stylish”, RHS Class of 1985

Who's Funding the Prop 1 War Chest?

Newsom's $14.2 million war chest for Proposition 1 is funded by pharmaceutical companies and the state's prison guard union (who else can afford those TV ads?), along with other special interests. Proposition 1 was then placed on the March ballot with barely any notice (Newsom's big advertising roll-out was January 30, leaving barely a month before the primary.) As Cal Matters reported in a follow-up article, Prop 1’s opponents have almost no funding.

The flawed Proposition 1 is part of a bevy of recent legislation, including SB 43 and Care Courts, which are sold as tools to address both homelessness and overdoses, but which combined will result in higher rates of both. All three of those plans, however impossible they are and will remain for cities and counties to actually implement, are critical to Governor Newsom's national ambitions, so much so that for Proposition 1, Newsom cleared California's March ballot of any other propositions that might have crowded the field.

Governor Newsom's Travis Bickle Bit:

Few of Marin’s new tech titans, old liberals, or paleoconservatives care that Proposition 1 won't work. They're sick of seeing drug users and homeless people on the street and have found their inner Travis Bickle in Scorcese's "Taxi Driver", desirous of "a real rain to come and wash all the scum off the streets." The problem is that this sort of proposition can boomerang on the people who expect it least. That's the alarm that Rob Wipond and Alex Barnard and Clare Cortright are trying to sound when they talk about involuntary treatment and conservatorships. You can't say they didn't warn you.

©️2024 Eva Chrysanthe

PS: There’s so much more to be said about Proposition 1, and I apologize for not going fully into the weeds on it. I know many of you will want to weigh in on the issue, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Please feel free to contact me at marincountyconfidential (at) gmail (dot) com