In its September response to a civil grand jury report that urged closing it, Solano County said Claybank Detention Facility in Fairfield had held no inmates since June 10. That day, the Sheriff’s Office opened a behavioral health unit at the Justice Center Detention Facility, moved Claybank’s remaining inmates to the Stanton Correctional Facility and reassigned Claybank’s security staff to other custody work, including the new unit. In that response, the county said Claybank’s kitchen prepared food for all of its jails, so the building was being kept in what the county called a “warm closure.” This report did not verify occupancy or kitchen use after September. The Board of Supervisors approved the response on Sept. 22 as part of its consent calendar, 5-0, without discussing it.
The grand jury’s June 15 report, titled “Save Over $10 Million by Closing Claybank Jail,” said Claybank held 59 inmates in mid-April, 15% of its capacity of 385, and that the county’s capital plan included about $13.4 million in projects there over four years. It reported the county’s jail population at 856 in 2017-18 and 501 in 2024-25; those counts imply a decline of about 41%, although the report described the drop as 58%. The report also said the published daily cost of holding one inmate rose from $178 to $503, and that Solano’s overall jail occupancy, 32% in December 2025, was the lowest among neighboring counties. It recommended rejecting the Claybank spending, closing the jail within a year, keeping it in warm closure or finding another use for it by December 2027, hiring an outside consultant to review the custody budget, and creating a citizen oversight committee.
The board, agreeing with the Sheriff’s Office, said key parts of the closure recommendation had already happened but called a formal closure not reasonable for now, because the county would first need a replacement kitchen, which would take significant planning and capital investment. The board said the $13.4 million is several separate projects rather than one Claybank renovation and declined to reject them outright; it will weigh each one on operational need and cost, including the building’s current and possible future uses. It also said jail needs can’t be judged by occupancy alone, because inmates must be housed separately by classification and by medical and behavioral health needs. The Sheriff’s Office said it will consider non-housing uses for Claybank, such as staff training and programs.
The board disputed that the custody division is underperforming, while acknowledging that the Sheriff’s Office has not hired an outside consultant to review jail costs in the last 10 years. In its September response, the county said the Sheriff’s Office was starting an independent analysis of the full daily cost of a jail bed that would compare Solano with four other counties, and the board said it would review those results before deciding whether more outside review is needed. The sheriff and the board both rejected a citizen oversight committee as unnecessary, citing existing oversight by the board, county administrators and auditors, the grand jury and state regulators, and the Sheriff’s Office’s voluntary pursuit of accreditation from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, whose surveyors were expected to visit this fall, the county reported in September.