LA County Supervisors Choose a New Jail Plan & Vote Serious $$ to Fund Mental Health Diversion Strategy

The LA County Board of Supervisors made two significant decisions on Tuesday regarding LA’s troubled jail system.

In an historic move, the Supes approved a plan to establish an Office of Diversion to oversee the county’s nascent mental health diversion effort. More importantly, the board allocated $120 million to launch the plan to divert mentally ill people away from jail and into community treatment, with a minimum of $10 million a year to continue the program.

LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey, was ebullient. This day, she said, was something “that many of us have been dreaming of in terms of people acknowledging that the old way of doing things simply isn’t working.”

But as excited as she was, Lacey emphasized that, when it came to diversion, the devil would be in the details.

She had questions about the motion, she said, but she was confident that all concerned could work out those details in good faith.

Next the board voted to go ahead with the construction of a replacement for the old and awful Men’s central jail, and for a new women’s jail at Mira Loma, which would be partially funded by the state of California.

The sticking point was, as it has always been, the size of the MCJ replacement.

Supervisor Michael Antonovich moved that the new replacement facility should supply 4,600 new beds, which is still a lower number than the 4,900 beds that Sheriff Jim McDonnell and Assistant Sheriff Terri McDonald, who oversees the county’s custody facilities, say are needed to appropriately house and treat the county’s mentally ill inmates—now and in the future—even with an aggressive diversion plan.

Supervisor Hilda Solis disagreed and proposed a far smaller 3,243-bed facility.

“In the light of the massive investment [in diversion] contemplated by a separate motion on the board’s agenda today,” said Solis, “it is clear that Los Angeles County intends to be at the forefront of efforts to develop safe and effective ways of reducing our society’s unsustainable and ineffective reliance on incarceration.”

Solis also name checked the MacArthur Foundation’s Challenge Grant, under which the county has agreed to be mentored to design and implement a plan to lower LA County’s jail population.

Finally, Sheila Kuehl offered a compromise plan for 3,885 beds.

“I think listening to this,” she said, “people probably feel a bit of whiplash. Everybody’s got a motion.” Her suggestion was a larger jail than she wanted, she said, and smaller than the sheriff and Assistant Sheriff Terri McDonald would like. But while she didn’t think incarceration was the answer for many people, she believed the compromise size was called for.

“…Over the next ten years,” Kuehl continued, “it seems unlikely to me that we will be able to divert every single person. And what will happen if we do not tear down that abomination, Men’s Central Jail, and put something in tis place that is truly a treatment facility…Then all that will happen is people who need mental health treatment…” will not get any treatment at all.

“We could imagine that everyone can be diverted, but the truth is, they cannot.”

Kuehl’s compromise passed 3/1 with Supervisor Don Knabe voting no, and Supervisor Solis abstaining.

Cindy Chang at the LA Times has more. Here’s a clip:

Men’s Central Jail currently houses about 4,000 inmates. Many of the inmates at the new jail would be moved from the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, which is now used for mentally ill inmates. That would allow the department to move some inmates in Men’s Central Jail to Twin Towers, which was originally designed to house the general population rather than the mentally ill.

It’s unclear how much the compromise plan would cost.

The jail proposals were not listed on the public meeting agenda. Instead, during Tuesday’s meeting, the supervisors tacked them onto the ambitious diversion plan for mentally ill offenders proposed by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and Kuehl.

Jail reform advocates praised the diversion plan but opposed the jail plan. They accused the board of violating open meeting laws by voting on the jail plan without written notice.

Anna Mouradian, a justice aide to Antonovich, said the county could have jeopardized $100 million in state money for the new women’s facility at Mira Loma if the board had not voted on the jail plan. The State Public Works Board is scheduled to consider the Mira Loma project on Monday.

Mouradian said the county was justified in voting on the jail plan on Tuesday because the diversion plan was on the meeting agenda, and the two issues “go hand in hand.”

Peter Eliasberg, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, threatened a lawsuit over the vote.

“This is an enormous construction project,” he told the board. “It should not be rushed ahead, no matter how much this board is afraid of losing money for Mira Loma.”

The MCJ replacement project will take six to eight years to complete and will do away with the crumbling and dangerous dungeon like structure that everyone agrees must be torn down. It is to be replaced with a state-of-the-art center geared toward providing treatment for inmates with mental and emotional health and substance abuse issues.

The new women’s jail to be built at the vacant Mira Loma Detention Center will provide a more dorm-like, rehabilitative environment that is designed toward women’s specific needs.