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A San Benito County Jail inmate unsuccessfully attempted to escape custody on March 3. Lieutenant Jorge Perez with the San Benito County Sheriff’s Department said there was no threat to the public and that the correctional officers followed protocol.
Perez said Joel Granados, who was on the inmate worker program, was throwing out trash around 4:15 a.m. when he fled from the two correctional officers that were accompanying him. He said Granados was captured following a short pursuit. The trash containers are just outside the barbed wire fencing surrounding the jail near the kitchen.
“He did not escape because of policies in place,” Perez said, adding that two correctional officers are required to go with an inmate worker when the trash is taken out.
Perez said Granados is in custody on charges of driving under the influence and drug offenses.
He said there was no indication that the escape was planned. He said Granados has been in the inmate worker program on and off since 2019.
“It was a spur of the moment,” he said. “He decided it was his chance.”
Perez said inmates go through a thorough background check and are evaluated to be part of the worker program. The charges the inmates are facing are also a factor. He said Granados is the first inmate to attempt an escape following Daniel Lopez Zavala’s successful escape in 2024.
Zavala was the first inmate to escape the jail since its construction in the 1990s. In May, Zavala escaped by jumping over the jail’s fence. He was caught in San Jose about 41 hours later with his girlfriend.
The Sheriff’s office, which oversees the jail, partially closed the second jail building citing staffing shortages. That building, the Curtis J. Hill Rehabilitation Center, was opened in 2021 in response to Assembly Bill 109, the 2011 California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Act, which aimed at reducing the population in state prisons by sending eligible inmates to county jails.
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