Santa Rita Jail

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Santa Rita Jail is a county jail located in Dublin, Alameda County, California adjacent to the Camp Parks Reserve Forces Training Area, and operated by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. Santa Rita houses the majority of persons arrested in Alameda County, which occupies most of the East San Francisco Bay Area and includes the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Alameda.

The original Santa Rita Jail was constructed in 1947 on a retired WWII training base near the current site. By 1983, overcrowding had become an issue, and plans were established for the construction of the current $172 million facility, which opened in 1989. Funding for the jail's construction was obtained through state bonds as well as local county matching funds.

The current 113-acre (0.46 km²) facility is laid out in a modern decentralized "campus" design, similar to many modern prisons, one-half mile long by one-quarter mile wide. The facility has 18 separate, self-contained housing units, a "core" building containing central booking, release and administration, and a service building containing the laundry, commissary, kitchen and warehouses. Santa Rita is the third largest jail in California and the fifth largest in the United States, and is considered a "mega-jail", specified to hold 4,000 prisoners at any one time, making it as large or larger than many California state prisons. Perhaps reflective of the Bay Area community that it serves, the jail incorporates several modern technological advances, and is touted by the Sheriff's Office as one of the most modern correctional facilities in the world. A 500-kilowatt peak-power solar array was installed in 2001 on the roofs of the housing units, supplying up to half of the jail's power demand during daylight hours. This solar array constitutes the largest such rooftop array in the Western Hemisphere. An automatic robotic cart system moves all meals, laundry, commissary items, supplies and garbage through the jail, allowing maximal restriction of prisoner movement throughout the facility.

Despite this modernistic design, as is the case with many American jail and prison facilities, particularly in California, Santa Rita has attracted controversy, particularly related to overcrowding, and violence. Many violent acts, including murders, have occurred in Santa Rita since its opening.

[edit] See also

Solar power in Alameda County

[edit] Cultural references

Some of the most melodramatic scenes in Tom Wolfe's novel A Man in Full (1998) are depicted at this jail, which Wolfe inadvertently situates within Pleasanton city limits, when the complex is technically in Dublin. These two towns are joined by Livermore to make up the three incorporated "planned communities" of the Livermore Valley, the wine-growing region 50 miles due east of San Francisco.