SAN JOSE — Cushy recliners. Free laundry service. Attentive staff.

It’s not a five-star resort but Santa Clara County’s newest solution to public drunkenness, a state-of-the-art “sobering station’’ where police will drop off severely intoxicated but otherwise mellow people to dry out — at what officials hope will be a cheaper cost to taxpayers than jail or an emergency room.

Sobering stations have replaced jail drunk tanks in Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Cruz and San Francisco counties. And Contra Costa County plans to open a 24-bed facility by the end of next year.

Santa Clara County’s new station is a key part of a broader effort by local officials to keep substance abusers and mentally ill people out of jail after a wave of litigation over jail conditions and the 2015 murder of bipolar inmate Michael Tyree by guards.

“The overall goal is to stop putting people in jail and start building treatment capacity,’’ said Judge Stephen Manley, who co-chairs the county’s jail diversion subcommittee with Supervisor Cindy Chavez. “I’m really pleased the county is finally moving forward on this very simple concept.’’

The station is set to open in late September in the Reentry Center near the county building and main jail in San Jose. It’s Santa Clara County’s second try at what has become a national trend toward decriminalizing public inebriation in favor of medical treatment. A previous sobering station, housed in a trailer in back of the Main Jail complex on Hedding Street, was run first by San Jose city and then by the county, and closed in 2003.

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Instead of a stark concrete cell with thin mattresses, the sobering station will have soft recliners that reduce dizziness compared to lying flat on a bed.

A team of nurses and “recovery coaches” will offer warm drinks, snacks, fresh laundry and referrals to detox programs, residential treatment centers and housing services.

“There is not always the most appropriate or empathetic care provided within the healthcare or criminal justice system for those with chronic alcohol use disorders,” said Shannon Smith-Bernardin, former director of San Francisco’s station, and co-founder of the National Sobering Collaborative. “Sobering facilities offer dedicated, compassionate staff trained in harm reduction, alcohol use disorders, medical oversight of intoxication, homeless healthcare, etc.’’

The new station will be open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year as an option for police and paramedics who pick up non-violent drunks. It will start with five recliners and initially take drop-offs by agencies that make relatively few arrests for public intoxication, including Campbell, Sunnyvale and sheriff’s deputies who patrol Saratoga, Cupertino and rural areas.

Starting in January, officers will be able to summon vans to pick up the pedestrians they’ve stopped for public drunkenness, sparing them from having to drop them off. The program may eventually include people arrested on suspicion of drunken driving, as in San Mateo County, but it won’t initially, officials said. By next summer, the station will expand capacity for up to 20 people at a time and be available for all law enforcement agencies countywide.

The result is expected to be that officers will be able to spend more time on the job instead of waiting around at a jail for a suspect to be booked or at a hospital emergency room. In Santa Cruz County, for instance, police spend an average six minutes on processing public intoxication cases at the sobering center, according to a recent report, compared with more than an hour and half to book them into jail.

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“That will be great,’’ said San Jose deputy police chief Anthony Mata of the sobering station in general. “It will save us time and allow officers to be out in the field.’’

Countywide, about 1,900 people are arrested annually for public drunkenness. Santa Clara police make nearly a quarter of the arrests, primarily at Levi’s Stadium, a police spokesman said. The second-most arrests are in San Jose, a sharp decline from a decade ago.

In late 2008, a report by this news organization found that San Jose police nabbed more people for public intoxication than any other department in the state, and that a disproportionate number — 57 percent — were Hispanic. The statistics touched off widespread criticism, especially among leaders in the Hispanic community, who questioned whether the law was being enforced fairly. Police do not need a Breathalyzer or any other test to arrest for public drunkenness, leaving wide discretion in the hands of officers.

San Jose police now arrest only about 340 people a year, 90 percent fewer.

While the sobering station is expected to take in occasional drinkers who’ve overindulged, especially during weekends or big events, it also will handle more chronic alcoholics, many of them homeless.

The sobering station is one facet of a broader effort by local officials to rethink who really needs to be in jail. In addition to the sobering station, the county early next year is opening a 30-bed residential recovery program for substance abusers at the Muriel Wright Center, a former youth ranch for female juvenile offenders in South San Jose, where sobering-station clients may wind up.

Under another program, more inmates with substance abuse disorders or mental illness are now being released under close supervision. And the county is studying the possibility of building a psychiatric health facility in East San Jose where police could drop off mentally ill people for assessment and referrals rather than locking them up in jail.

The sobering station will cost about $12 million to run through 2020. The county will pay for half and the rest will be funded by a federal grant intended to reduce Medicare and Medi-Cal expenses by providing more effective care to people like homeless alcoholics who frequently use costly services like the emergency room.

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“Today, we spend hundreds of dollars a day for every person we incarcerate,’’ Supervisor Cindy Chavez said. “By using tools like sobering stations versus incarceration, we can get folks off the street, return officers to patrol faster and get individuals the services they need.’’

Staff Writer Robert Salonga contributed to this report.

About 1,910 people were arrested in 2016 for public drunkenness in Santa Clara County, far fewer than in 2007 when San Jose alone arrested 4,461 people. Here are the top 15 law enforcement agencies in order of the number of arrests over the last two years (2015 and 2016).

Santa Clara County total: 3,820

Santa Clara: 839*

San Jose: 644

Mountain View: 426

Campbell: 406

Palo Alto: 231

Gilroy: 228

Santa Clara County Sheriff: 209

Sunnyvale: 207

Milpitas: 149

Morgan Hill: 139

San Jose State University: 114

Los Gatos: 75

Stanford University: 33

California Highway Patrol: 30

Santa Clara County Transit: 25

*Many at Levi’s Stadium

Source: Santa Clara County chief executive’s office