LA County Supes to Approve County’s Participation in MacArthur Foundation Grant-Driven Plot to Reform LA’s Jails

The vote on Tuesday is really just a formality.

No one really expects the LA County Board of Supervisors to vote NO on the question of whether or not to authorize Sheriff Jim McDonnell to to accept $150,000 in grant funds from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, thus committing the county to participate in round one of MacArthur’s “Safety and Justice Challenge.”

But agreeing to the grant means committing to a process of jail reform that county officials have not previously managed to fully embrace.

So Tuesday’s hopefully no-controversy vote could actually be a heartening step forward.

You may remember that, at the end of May, LA County learned that it had been chosen as one of 20 jurisdictions in the nation asked to take part in the MacArthur Foundation’s ambitious Safety and Justice Challenge, a $75 million initiative that hopes to “reduce over-incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails.”

The 20 areas selected for this first phase of the challenge include New York City, New Orleans, LA, Pima County, AZ, Harris County, TX, Pennington County, SD, and the entire state of Connecticut. The idea is for these cities and counties (and one state) to be mentored by the nation’s experts in such things through the process of creating and refining a plan to reform their respective jail systems.

Then, if LA is chosen as one of 10 jurisdictions advance to the final stage of the competitive grant challenge, the county will receive a second round of mentoring plus funding of between $500,000 and $2 million annually to implement its plan for reform. (Since LA County has the largest jail system in the nation, it would likely be eligible for the whole 2 million yearly.)

In other words, if LA County is one of the final ten, then it will really, really have to be committed to certain reforms—things like a pre-trial release program, among other strategies—that it’s dragged its feet on in the past.

You’ve heard of Trojan horses? This is a Trojan grant—but one with a very positive purpose in mind.

Yet the recommendation from Sheriff McDonnell that the Supes are being asked to approve contains language that suggests that McDonnell, anyway, and presumably his friend DA Jackie Lacey, are willing to move forward on pre-trial release and more.

Here, for example, are a couple of key paragraphs. (I’ve italicized the sections that are particularly interesting.)

The County’s jails remain extremely challenged and overcrowded; currently housing 3,000 inmates above the state recommended capacity. This motivating factor propels the Department in seeking alternative measures that result in favorable outcomes. The jail system will soon exceed over $1 billion in annual operating expenses. The costs continue to grow as on going litigation requires increased accountability regarding crowding conditions, security, sanitation, and access to health care. It is clear that the revolving door of short term incarcerations has proven to have a destabilizing effect on the life of many offenders, especially when a stable home and employment is disrupted due solely to the fact that a low-risk inmate cannot afford to post bail. Throughout the County, nearly half of the Average Daily Inmate Population (ADIP) is pre-trial, and a segment of these inmates are low-risk and held due to poverty rather than risk.

Utilizing a risk-based release decision process could conservatively reduce the pre-trial population by more than 10 to 15 percent and focus on better outcomes through community treatment and supervision. Reducing our ADIP will reduce operational costs, overcrowding, and dramatically improve our ability to provide access to in-custody critical health care and rehabilitation services. Jail violence will also be affected and the predatory behavior of higher risk inmates preying upon less criminally sophisticated inmates will be reduced, along with inmate anxiety as they struggle to gain access to limited program resources in custody and upon their transition back into the community.

That’s good stuff. And it suggests that LA County’s full-hearted participation in the Safety and Justice Challenge just might be a very good thing.