LA COUNTY SUPERVISORS VOTE, THIS TIME LEGALLY, ON A REPLACEMENT FOR MEN’S CENTRAL JAIL
On Tuesday, the LA County Board of Supervisors once again voted to approve the construction of a 3,885-bed facility to replace the aging Men’s Central Jail as well as a women’s facility at Mira Loma detention center.
The Supervisors did not veer from their original jail vote on Aug. 11, which was found to be in violation of CA’s open meetings law.
Because the jail proposal was attached to a major plan to divert the mentally ill from county jails, the Supes also replicated their original vote on the diversion program, but not without first hearing from advocates and others calling for a smaller (or in some cases, larger) jail.
LA County Sheriff Jim McDonnell urged the board to bump the capacity to a flexible range of 3900-4900 beds, saying, “We have now received three independent sets of population projections that all show the jail population is trending upward…and they have come back, by and large, with the same projections, the same calculated bed needs, and the same recommendations.”
The SoCal ACLU’s legal director, Peter Eliasberg, said, “If you want to improve public safety, building jails is not really the way to do it for people with mental illness and co-occurring disorders.” Eliasberg still calls 3,885 too large, but says it’s far better than a 4,600-bed jail. (The 4,600 was recommended by Health Management Associates. Read more about their problematic report and about the jail size debate: here.)
The board also unanimously approved an amendment by Supes Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl to create a gender-responsive committee to look into how to best reduce the negative impact of housing women in the very remote Mira Loma jail, far from their families and communities.
“The Mira Loma jail will be a four-hour one-way trip for a family that lives in Lynwood,” Supervisor Solis said. “It is hard to see how these women will have sufficient access to visitors, programs and medical care.”
I must be missing some significant point related to the logic of lowering the number of beds in the new jail. The current MCJ has over 5,200 beds and is overcrowded to the point that most prior to prop47 inmates only served a small percentage of their sentences; so now that prop 47 has created thousands of new misdemeanor inmates coupled with the States releases of inmates to county jails, we are reducing the number of beds because the massive mental health diversion program (never tested on the proposed scale) will mean the mental health and over crowded problems will be solved.
Dating back to the 20’s and again with the original MCJ the assessment of the number of beds required to meet future needs was drastically under estimated. Seems like we’re headed down the path to repeat the past looks like just a progressive way to kick the can down the road instead of biting the bullet and doing the right thing instead of the politically thing. is my analysis totally wrong?
Your analysis is correct. The starting point should be what the bed space would be for the entire system to permit all inmates to serve 100% of their time, minus good credit/work credit. From there separate the percentage that are mental health cases, and from that reduced figure determine what can be diverted without incarceration, keeping in mind the public’s safety as your primary concern.
Given that inmates who pose a threat to the public are routinely released after serving only a fraction of their sentence, this whole jail construction thing is a charade. The true bed space for the entire system should be in the neighborhood of 25K, and any effort to reduce what we currently have, which does NOT solve the problem, fails even worse in addressing the bigger picture.
This is all about feel good politics and well placed campaign contributions from the construction industry. Given the plan’s abject failure at addressing population size, growth, and the uptick in violent crime, whatever is constructed based on it will be obsolete before they dig the first ceremonial shovel.
The jail system should be built around the need, not the other way around. Judges should be determining sentences, not jail bureaucrats.
If you build it (mega jail)…… they will come and it will constantly be full.
Well, #1 and #2 you have said it all,this will just sugar coat the problem which will be revisited in another 5 years or so. This is just politics as usual, and the voters accept anything politicians put on the table. For example, look at what we have running for national office, a fool that the voters have falling in love with because he provides easy answers to everything.
#3 If an inmate has been sentenced to jail for a crime he/she has committed ,why shouldn’t they serve the time sentenced. The excuse that we don’t have enough jail beds to accommodate them serving the time set by the court will never deter crime nor will offenders ever be held accountable for their crime. I believe reason
we have jails and prisons is to protect society and hopefully change the criminals behavior because the consequences of their crime is not worth doing it again.
if jail or prison time is so short it’s no big thing for them to serve a day or two or a month or two. The real problem as to why so many people are in jail is there is so much crime because there are little consequences for getting caught and convicted for
committing the crime.
Until the good citizens of California rally and raise hell demanding a “Back to Basics” in law enforcement and criminal justice …….NOTHING will change.
Our perseverance should be just as great or greater with more resolve than any of the current protesters who push the envelope to get their point across.
I’m just saying.
I think we have let political correctness, liberal anti-government groups and the “it’s all about me” mindsets totally obscure the role of laws and punishment in a civilized society. As the politicians (getting a nod from the citizens) continue to allow long standing views, norms, beliefs and practices of society to be called into question, litigated, challenged and destroyed, we will slowly slide back into a world of lawlessness, savagery and inhumanity. The terms “punishment”, “deterence” and “pealty” have lost their meaning and are no longer politically correct. No one is reasonbible for their actions or behavior anymore. I guess it’s true that most things are a continuum and eventually come 360 degree full circle. We are quickly moving back towards the darker days it appears. Once we reach the bottom of the trough maybe..just maybe we wil be able to come toegether in groups, establish communities, appoint representatives, create laws, higher people to enforce those laws and build places to house those people who brake the agreed upon and esablished laws to punish and deter them from commiting acts in violations of those laws. WOW! I can only dream someday this is were we will aspire and evolve BACK to.
A new jail, will simply provide a new corner to beat clients.
I don’t think the worst things that were committed in that dungeon have been seen, so how do they plan on making this better??? When inmates are murdered Cases need to be investigated by IA (Especially the July 2011, reinvestigated since the recent indictments) not by Community and Volunteer Officers working part time for another department, they’re main goal is not justice, it’s using someone else’s tragedy to get themselves a higher classification, there priorities are collecting coins and creating gossip, wasting tax payers money, ruining lives, and violating victims rights to privacy, by trying to discredit them enough so everyone can gain something behind the victims back. Then laugh at me to my face about the joke still in a box…. and corruption at it finest. The needs to be an oversight panel for the victims and families whom family members where murdered so we can move on with our lives. Currently the jail oversight panel to rebuild the jail, but how can you rebuild something when you haven’t picked up the puzzle.
@ 7. Pretty much.