A new detention center in San Francisco designed to hold recently arrested drug users allows detainees to simply walk out if they please.
The downtown center, which has been pitched as an alternative to jails or hospitals, provides officers a place to take publicly intoxicated people to sober up and access addiction treatment.
The facility is meant to keep users off the streets while allowing police to return to their patrols, relieving them of lengthy paperwork required at jail intake.
“Technically, they can walk out,” Rani Singh, chief legal counsel for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office, told the San Francisco Standard. “There are no locked doors.”
She added that while no one will be held against their will, “you can create an environment where, hopefully, they don’t want to leave.”
Mayor Daniel Lurie hailed the center ahead of its Monday opening.
“It’s a new model that allows police officers to quickly arrest those engaged in public drug use and bring them to a health-focused facility where they can sober up and have a chance to be connected to treatment,” he said in an Instagram post.
The facility also gives users access to showers and even reclining chairs, the Standard reported.
San Francisco County Sheriff Paul Miyamoto made it clear at a press conference that the center is not a “voluntary” intake and is “intended to keep people out of jail.”
“But it’s not a ‘get out of jail free’ card, because there are consequences to being publicly intoxicated and being taken in,” he said.
Those hauled in to the center can stay for up to 23 hours, but officials said they expect the average stay to be less than eight hours.
If a person tries to leave before sobering up, the sheriff’s office said deputies on site can rearrest them.
“While the facility is not physically locked, individuals are detained until they are able to care for themselves and appropriate for release,” the sheriff’s office told the Standard.
“If someone chooses to leave, they may be subject to rearrest and booked at the county jail.”
The city has created confusion after saying in January that users at the center “will be transported by law enforcement after being placed under arrest for public intoxication.”
However, Singh said Friday that detainees are not actually being arrested.
“We actually have probable cause to arrest [but] we’re not arresting them,” he told Mission Local.
San Francisco continues to grapple with a staggering number of fatal drug overdoses. The latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data ranked it the second-worst in the US, trailing only Baltimore.
Even as the opioid crisis drags on, federal figures show a modest shift: Overall overdose deaths in San Francisco have begun to decline. In 2025, fatalities fell to their lowest level in five years. Still, the city remains near the top nationally in per-capita overdose deaths.
