As WLA readers are aware, on January 13, 2026, the third person of the year died in Los Angeles County’s jail system.
Now, today, Thursday, January 22, there was a fourth in-custody death in the county’s massive and dangerous jail system.
Bonta warned us
As we reported last year, on Sept 8, 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a long and very tersely-worded lawsuit against the County of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and LA County’s Correctional Health Services (CHS).
In the lawsuit, Bonta described the “unconstitutional and inhumane conditions” in the nation’s largest county-run correctional health system.
Bonta’s view of the jails was affected by the fact that, a few years earlier, he and his office launched an investigation into whether the LASD had engaged in a “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional policing.
Among the issues that Bonta and his team’s investigation revealed turned out to be an alarming pattern of constitutional violations at Los Angeles County jails, which arguably led to a significant increase in in-custody deaths, despite decreases in the jail population size.
To illustrate, the AG pointed to uninhabitable and overcrowded jail facilities with inadequate plumbing, sanitation, and temperature control—conditions that, according to Bonta, contributed to multiple deaths.
Among the system’s other failures that the AG flagged in his 2025 lawsuit was the failure to provide adequate medical care to people inside the jails,
This latter issue is one that WLA’s inmate sources and some of our LASD sources working in custody have repeatedly described to us as life threatening.
The AG and his team agree.
“Defendants are responsible for the safety and well-being of individuals incarcerated in the Los Angeles County jails,” wrote Bonta, pointing to jail residents who have been “subjected for many years to inhumane conditions,” which reportedly include, “filthy cells with broken and overflowing toilets, infestations of rats and roaches, and no clean water for drinking or bathing…” and other painful conditions.
“Many individuals suffer physical or mental deterioration in these punitive conditions,” wrote Bonta,’ “which in turn leads to “preventable circumstances, such as overdoses, suicides, or violence among incarcerated persons.”
From 2016 to 2025, approximately 37.5 percent of the 345 people who have died in the LASD’s jails, died as a result of circumstances that, according to the AG, were preventable.
Oh, and on the topic of those 345 people who have died inside the jails since 2016, approximately sixty percent of those deaths have occurred “in the last four years,” wrote the AG,” in his complaint.
“As of the filing of this complaint,” wrote Bonta, “there have been 36 deaths in the Los Angeles County jails in 2025 alone, or approximately one death per week.”
And….as of today, Thursday, Jan. 22, we’ve hit our fourth death in three weeks and a day.
More soon. So stay tuned.