The Care First Community Coalition plans to hold a rally outside the Alameda County Administration Building on Tuesday morning to demand that Alameda County supervisors halt the expansion of the project – which has been debated now for nearly a decade – and invest $171 million in a "continuum of care" that prevents criminalization and jail deaths.
Despite the resolution, Care First members are upset that funding for Santa Rita Jail continues to increase while funding for behavioral health services remain stagnant. In 2016, the late Supervisor Wilma Chan said she had some reservations about the jail project but voted for it because 1,100 incarcerated people are referred to the mental health wing every month and need to have the best services possible.However, Chan sympathized with critics of the jail project, saying that, "So many social service programs have been cut in recent years that it caused a lot of incarceration that wasn't necessary.