Santa Barbara

The County Board of Supervisor may have given Sheriff Bill Brown the green light to collect $39 million in state grant funding that's been earmarked to help with an expansion at the Santa Barbara County Jail, Brown says it's still too soon to predict just how much that project will cost.

As it stands, he's tossed out what he calls a "best estimate" in terms of what operational, staffing and other related costs will look like.

But there's no guarantee that figure won't change in the future.

The expansion, which will be geared toward reducing recividism, will provide transitional housing for nearly …

A spokesperson for the Santa Barbara County Jail has confirmed they booked nearly 100 people into the system last weekend after a weekend college party got out of hand.

Although police aren't sure what prompted the display of violence, what they do know is that by the end of it, many people were throwing rocks and beer bottles at one another.

The annual spring break party, otherwise known as Deltopia, was attended by about 15,000 people, according to a spokesperson for the sheriff's department.

But it wasn't until a campus police officer got smacked in the face by a backpack containing several …

A spokesperson for the Santa Barbara County Jail said the facility understands they still have quite a few hurdles to overcome when it comes to the late-night release of inmates.

The challenge, according to officials, is that public transportation doesn't run 24-hours a day, which means persons released after-hours often face a very long, and in some cases, very cold walk to town.

At current, the facility has spent about $12,000 to build 11 temporary holding cells within the jail transportation corridor, and they intend to start using them next month.

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department hopes this will cut down …