By Micky Duxbury
In 2021, Maurice Monk lay motionless for three days in his Alameda County jail cell. Body camera videos showed sheriff’s deputies and nurses from Wellpath, the for-profit jail healthcare company, throwing his meals and medications through a slot in the door without entering the cell to perform a welfare check.
Mr. Monk, a 45-year-old African-American being treated for serious mental illness, argued with an AC transit bus driver during the pandemic because he wasn’t wearing his mask. Police intervened, and Mr. Monk was taken to jail. Maurice’s sister, Elvira Monk, frequently called the jail to ask if he was getting his medication. She didn’t hear back from the Sheriff’s Office until a deputy knocked on her door to inform her that her brother was dead.
KTVU was the first to break the story of Monk’s horrific death. “When deputies finally found his body, stacks of uneaten food trays and pills lay scattered about the floor.”
Wellpath resolved a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Monk’s family by paying a $2.5 million settlement. “This is an admission by the people who are paid millions of taxpayer dollars that they failed to protect and ensure the health and well-being of a man whose life was entirely in their hands,” said civil rights attorney Adanté Pointer.
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) ultimately settled with Maurice Monk’s family for $7 million. Elvira Monk was shaking with grief and anger when she testified at the Board of Supervisors meeting last spring, along with many other community activists. “There were people who died there before my brother. There were people who died after my brother. Wellpath needs to leave.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O1m6k-IimE
Wellpath, owned by a global investment firm, is the largest medical provider in jails and prisons in California and the nation. Independent court monitors found that the company routinely failed to staff California county jails with sufficient numbers of qualified nurses and doctors, meaning that sick patients often wait weeks or, in emergencies, crucial minutes or hours to be treated. In April 2024, the National Union of Healthcare Workers raised grave concerns about deteriorating patient care due to Wellpath consistently staffing less than two-thirds of positions.
Prison and for-profit healthcare do not match
Immigrant-only prisons across the United States are also recipients of healthcare from Wellpath. CNN conducted an investigation that uncovered deaths as well as the avoidable, serious health outcomes that are attributed to substandard health care provided in these detention centers, which was the responsibility of Wellpath.
The Independent, a Livermore newspaper, published a scathing editorial earlier this year that asked the county not to renew the contract with Wellpath, especially given the 70+ deaths that have occurred in the jail since 2014.
At two special joint meetings of the Health and Public Protection committees of the Board of Supervisors earlier this year, over 50 community activists demanded that the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office contract with Wellpath not be renewed and that the contract be awarded to a not-for-profit provider. Former Mayor of Berkeley and State Senator Loni Hancock stated in the May 2025 hearing: “We have an underperforming healthcare contractor, which turns out to be the largest in the country, and they have 1400 lawsuits pending against them.”
Alameda County Jail in Dublin, also known as Santa Rita, was originally designed for a population of 3500. The number of detainees has declined significantly since the COVID pandemic forced the release of many low-level non-violent offenders. The most recent (October 2025) detainee total is 1420. Almost 91% of those are individuals awaiting pretrial, which means they have not been convicted of any charge. Based on data from the Alameda County Jail Population Analysis done in 2023, over 25% of the jail population has mental health needs, many with serious mental illness. Approximately 94% of the population is male, 6% female, 48% Black, 30% Latino, and 15% white.
In 2022, the Sheriff’s Department entered into a federal consent decree that addressed the inhumane conditions that the mentally ill faced in the jail: inadequate time out of cells, inadequate access to rehabilitation, and the overuse of solitary confinement.
Wellpath is the wrong path
Since 2020, the consulting firm Mazars Group has been contracted to conduct quality reviews of medical care in Santa Rita Jail. Wellpath has performed far below industry standards in several areas that directly impact safety. For example, many detainees in Santa Rita Jail have not been adequately monitored in their cells when they are at risk. Advocacy groups are demanding that the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office and the Board of Supervisors take decisive action to improve health services in the jail by not renewing the contract with Wellpath, and instead consider a not-for-profit provider.
Community advocacy groups such as the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Families Advocating for the Seriously Mentally Ill, (FASMI), Stop Deaths and Harm in the Jail, and the Care First Community Coalition have called on the Board of Supervisors to divert monies from the Sheriff’s Department to programs based in the community. Such programs have been shown to reduce crime and provide much-needed treatment for those with mental illness and substance abuse. But as long as people are detained in jail, community advocates all agree that medical care should be provided by an organization that cares first and foremost about their patients– not their bottom line.
Micky Duxbury is the Chair of Stop Deaths and Harm in the Jail Group.