343 people were so poor they were in debt for buying soap, toothpaste in Sacramento County jails
Reality Check is a Bee series holding officials and organizations accountable and shining a light on their decisions. Have a tip? Email realitycheck@sacbee.com.
Documents show that 1,935 people incarcerated in Sacramento County jails were considered too poor to afford basic hygiene items such as soap and toothpaste at the jail commissary and were greenlit to go into debt purchasing $4.41 “indigent kits” to keep themselves clean behind bars.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office does not provide such basic hygiene items to the individuals living in its two jails on an ongoing basis.
One of the documents released to The Sacramento Bee in response to a California Public Records Act request accounts for the total debt. That document shows that as of Dec. 31, 2023, 343 people collectively owed the jail $12,651.11 for indigent kits. A 32-page document listing the names of the people considered indigent is almost completely redacted, but says “Name” on the first page and, on the final page, says “1935 Incarcerated People qualifed (sic) for Indigent Kit as of 12.31.23.”
Over the five weeks between Nov. 26, 2023 and Dec 29, 2023, 577 kits were ordered.
In December, data submitted to the California Board of State and Community Corrections shows the combined average daily population of the county’s two jails was about 3,000 people in December 2023. Jail populations fluctuate based on new releases and arrests, and, to a lesser degree, in-custody deaths.
Sacramento County basic hygiene kit for poor people in jail
Several individuals appear to have been ordering the kits for more than a year. One person owed $364.60 at the end of 2023 — over 82 weeks’ worth of kits at the price listed by the sheriff’s office last August.
Here's how much debt individuals owed Sacrmamento County jail for soap, toothpaste
Those who order the kits are “not as well-to-do, or are not coming in with bank accounts sitting on the outside,” said Kari Hamilton, an organizer with Decarcerate Sacramento who was incarcerated in the Sacramento County jail from 2014 to 2017. Many of the people who qualify for indigent kits, she said, are homeless.
A study of the jails from May 2022 found that “30% of people released from jail are possibly unhoused.” And previous reporting suggests that some people are likely in jail because they are homeless: The Bee has found that local law enforcement may arrest people in connection with citations issued for being homeless in public. Homeless people with serious mental illness, the jail study found, represent a large portion of those with “repeat bookings.”
Hamilton observed the same thing. “A lot of people that are homeless, they’re going out, they’re coming back in, they’re going out, they’re coming back in,” she said. She said that when people return to jail with money on their person, that money is taken from them and put toward any debt they accrued the last time they were incarcerated. A spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for a comment on that, nor to questions about the indigent kits for this story.
In an August 2023 call for commissary bids from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, the law enforcement agency outlined its policy: “Inmates who have a balance less than the cost of indigent kit (currently $4.41) in their trust account and have not purchased a commissary during the previous week are considered indigent. Indigent kits may be ordered by indigent inmates once per week and the amount of the kit is subtracted from the inmate’s trust account, even if doing so results in a negative trust account balance.”
The request for bids describes the contents of the kit: Eight pieces of standard paper; four stamped envelopes; one golf pencil; one half-ounce roll-on deodorant; two .28-ounce tubes of toothpaste; .34 ounces of a shampoo/body wash; and a toothbrush.
“You’re in a cell,” Hamilton said. “You don’t really get a chance to go wash your body very much. That little tiny thing of body wash — it wasn’t enough.”
A standard stick of roll-on Old Spice deodorant is 3.25 ounces, which is six and a half times the amount provided to people in the jail. A travel-size tube of toothpaste is .85 ounces, which is about a third of an ounce more than the amount provided to people in the jail. Travel size shampoos and conditioners are typically closer to 3.4 ounces.
Millions for ‘inmate welfare’ not used for soap
Danica Rodarmel, an attorney and criminal justice lobbyist who runs Whole Consulting, said the debt was “infuriating” and inhumane. “Yeah, you got poor people in your jail and they need soap,” she said. “You’re gonna need to pay for that.”
The mere fact that there were hundreds of people in jail who couldn’t afford $4.41 for hygiene necessities, Rodarmel said, was an indictment of social services.
“Instead of meaningfully investing in the kinds of supportive services and housing we know we need for people in our community who need things that they cannot afford themselves,” she said, “we have over-relied on law enforcement and incarceration in a very failed attempt to — I don’t even want to say ‘solve those problems’ — but try to get those problems out of sight.”
She said it was “horrifying” that the sheriff’s office did not use its inmate welfare fund to buy hygiene items. “They’re putting poor people into debt for indigent kits while having a balance of several million dollars sitting in their inmate welfare fund, unused,” she said.
The sheriff’s office reported to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors in December that at the end of the last fiscal year, the fund had a balance of $16,116,917.
