Supes Unaware of DOJ’s Jails Concerns (Really?)…A New Child Protection Czar To Be Created….Adult Interrogation Techniques Not Good for Kids…..and More

SUPES SAID TO BE UNAWARE THAT DOJ WAS REALLY, REALLY UNHAPPY WITH LA COUNTY’S TREATMENT OF MENTALLY ILL JAIL INMATES (SERIOUSLY???)

The LA Times Abby Sewell reports that, on Tuesday, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas expressed that he and his fellow board members were in the dark about the seriousness of Department of Justice officials’ concerns regarding the reported ongoing mistreatment of mentally ill jail inmates.

The supervisor’s remarks were made in reaction to the blisteringly critical assessment of the issue released last Friday by U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte and the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.

While we genuinely commend the fact that the supervisor came right out and admitted that the board should have been more aware, we also wonder how exactly the supes managed to blinder themselves so thoroughly.

There were, after all, lots of red flags. For instance, there was the jump in suicides in the jails: In 2012, there were four “completed” suicides. In 2013, there were ten inmate suicides. And, mind you, these stats came after all the much-touted improvements were made in the running of the jails.

Plus, in January of this year there was a suicide that the DOJ especially noted as being emblematic of “systemic deficiencies in the Jails’ suicide prevention practices.” The case in question involved a vocally suicidal inmate with a history of mental illness, who—according to proper protocol—should have been checked on every 15 minutes, but who instead remained unobserved and unchecked in his cell for at least three hours during which time, surprise! he killed himself.

As Hector Villagra, the executive director of the So Cal ACLU wrote on Friday when the DOJ report was released, “…a number of today’s Justice Department findings are eerily similar to those reported by Dr. Terri Kupers, a nationally recognized expert, in a 2008 ACLU of Southern California study – a study that the Board of Supervisors, Department of Mental Health and the Sheriff’s Department ignored.”

Moreover, even after getting the bad news in September that the DOJ had launched a civil-rights investigation into problems in the LA County Jail system (this is on top of the FBI’s ongoing probe into abuse and corruption in the jails), during the discussion of whether or not to approve the county’s hugely expensive new Vanir jail building plan, those advocating for the plan from the LASD and from county mental health claimed that this multi-year jail-building strategy was exactly what the DOJ folks wanted. Without it, the building plan supporters threatened, we’d end up with a federal consent decree or some other equally onerous (and expensive) form of federal oversight.

So….the supes approved the building plan and a month later almost to the day the DOJ sent its letter informing the county that that it had run out of patience, and it was now time for “corrective action in the form of a court-enforceable agreement”—AKA federal oversight.

That certainly worked out well.

Okay, enough of our lecturing. Here’s a clip from Sewell’s story:

….Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said board members and their staffs were not privy to communications sent by the U.S. Justice Department to Sheriff’s Department and county mental health officials regarding ongoing problems until September. That’s when county officials received a letter announcing a federal civil-rights investigation of the jail system.

“That was our notification,” Ridley-Thomas said. “From my point of view, that’s hugely problematic.”

The issue gained urgency last week, when federal officials issued a scathing report on jail conditions for mentally ill inmates, citing a recent surge in jail suicides. The Justice Department said it would seek court oversight of reforms.

In 2002, the county approved an agreement with federal officials requiring improvements in the handling of mentally ill inmates. But unlike a similar — and more recent — agreement with the federal government involving the county’s treatment of juveniles in the probation system, board members neither requested nor received regular updates on efforts to resolve the federal jail issues.

There were conflicting portrayals Tuesday of who was responsible for the communication breakdown. Some county officials and staff — including Ridley-Thomas, who joined the board in 2008 — said they didn’t know until September that the county had entered into a formal agreement with the federal government concerning jail problems.

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AND NOW THE GOOD NEWS: SUPES CREATE CHILD PROTECTION CZAR & MORE

On Tuesday, the LA County Board of Supervisors took an important step when they voted 4-1 to create a “child protection czar” who will head up a new Office of Child Protection. This move was one of the urgent recommendations made by The Blue Ribbon Commission on Child Protection in their final report issued on April 18 of this year.

KPCC’s Rina Palta has the story. Here’s a clip:

The vote, split four to one, came after hours of debate on how to proceed with dozens of recommendations put forward by a Blue Ribbon Commission on Child Protection. In April, the panel declared L.A.’s system in a “state of emergency” and said the only fix would be going outside the county’s current patchwork of law enforcement, health, and foster care officials currently responsible for ensuring child safety in the county.

They recommended establishing a new Office of Child Protection to coordinate the departments and oversee broad changes to the system.

The Board, with the exception of Supervisor Don Knabe, agreed to the proposal.

Knabe said a brand new bureaucracy would hardly solve the issues the child welfare system faces.

“We started out DPSS and then we went Department of Children and Family Services, now we’re going to have an Office of Child Protection, next we’ll have an Office of Child Protection Protection, and another committee and commission,” Knabe said, before voting “no” on the proposal.

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SOME OF COPS’ COMMON COERCIVE INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES SHOULD NOT BE USED WITH KIDS, SAYS STUDY

According to an ongoing psychological study at the University of Virginia some of the confrontational and deceptive interrogation techniques commonly used by law enforcement to question subjects are deeply problematic when used with teenagers and their still-developing brains. For one thing, the techniques can result in false confessions.

Fariss Samarrai of Science Daily has the story. Here’s a clip:

Some interrogation techniques commonly used by police departments throughout the United States to obtain confessions from adult suspects may be inappropriate for use on juveniles, according to an ongoing University of Virginia psychology study.

Such techniques purport to detect deception in criminal suspects and use methods to heighten suspects’ anxiety during interviews, with the goal of obtaining an admission of guilt. Such psychologically manipulative interrogation techniques are considered contentious by critics because they can result in false confessions.

The risk of this is heightened for juvenile suspects, whose still-developing brains make them impressionable and vulnerable to interviewing methods in a stress-filled interrogation room.

“Teenagers are good at making bad decisions,” said Todd Warner, a U.Va. Ph.D. candidate in psychology who is conducting the study. “More than 90 percent of juvenile suspects waive their Miranda rights and begin talking after an arrest. Because they are young and the areas of the brain responsible for executive function are undeveloped, they are more likely than adults to make impulsive decisions, are more suggestible to authority figures, and weigh short-term gains, such as leaving the interrogation room, over long-term consequences, [like] remaining in custody.

“These decision-making tendencies can make teenagers more vulnerable to making incriminating statements or even false admissions of guilt when under the pressure of an interrogation.”

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SUPREMES REFUSE APPEAL OF RULING REQUIRING STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR INMATES WITH DISABILITIES EVEN IF IN COUNTY CARE

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined without comment to hear an appeal by the State of California of a court order that holds state officials responsible for making sure that inmates with disabilities receive appropriate accommodations in the various county jails. (PS: These are inmates that, pre-realignment, would have been the responsibility of the state.)

When they appealed the lower court ruling, Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris, maintained that the ruling, if allowed to stand, would make the California “liable for alleged ADA violations in the county jails”

Uh, yeah. And your point would be…..?

Reuter’s Jennifer Chaussee has the story.

Here’s a clip:

….The court’s denial highlighted tensions between the most populous U.S. state and federal courts about crowding and conditions in California’s troubled prison system.

The state has been under court orders to reduce its prison population since 2009 and has sought to comply partly by funneling some non-violent offenders to county jurisdiction.

In 2012, a U.S. District Court judge ordered state officials to notify the counties when inmates have disabilities entitling them to accommodations under federal law while in jail. The state must also take complaints from prisoners who say they are not getting assistance they need.

“They were essentially refusing to pass that on to counties,” said Lisa Ells, part of the legal team representing disabled inmates. “So the counties would receive an inmate and have no idea if that person was disabled.”

In her 2012 order, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken required the state to track the roughly 2,000 disabled inmates in its custody and report to county jails when someone was transferred to county jurisdiction who was entitled to accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Those accommodations can include wheelchairs, tapping canes for the blind or accessible beds and toilets. Once the state makes the county aware of an inmate’s needs, it is the county’s legal obligation to provide the necessary accommodations.

After the order was issued, the state complied, but also submitted a series of appeals aimed at overturning the requirement.