Alameda County set to settle suit over jail conditions for women
Alameda County will pay $130,000 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by four women who say they were subjected to execrable conditions in Santa Rita Jail, including overflowing toilets and walls stained with blood and feces.
The settlement, approved by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, requires Santa Rita to institute a slew of policy changes to ensure better treatment of female inmates.
The jail will have to provide curtains for privacy during searches, garbage bags in holding cells and menstrual pads for women who need them.
“This is a small action, but I think the treatment we received is emblematic of what goes on in jails throughout the United States,” said Anne Weills, the lead plaintiff in the case, who is a civil rights attorney and the wife of Oakland attorney Dan Siegel.
Weills and her co-plaintiffs, Mollie Costello, Alyssa Eisenberg and Tova Fry, were arrested for civil disobedience on Feb. 14, 2014, during a demonstration outside the Elihu Harris State Building in Oakland, at which protesters urged state Attorney General Kamala Harris to prosecute police officers who shoot black men.
Eisenberg was “forced by deputies to parade up and down the hallway, in front of (a) glass window through which approximately 17-20 male prisoners peered at her,” the women claimed in their lawsuit, filed in October 2014.