April 4, 2023 The sweeping proposal to depopulate and decarcerate Los Angeles County jails aimed to declare a “humanitarian crisis” in the jails and spearhead programs to keep people out.
By Scott Schwebke Source The Whittier Daily News, Calif. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A controversial proposal to depopulate and decarcerate Los Angeles County jails collapsed Monday, April 3, after its main proponent, Supervisor Hilda L. Solis, withdrew the plan in the face of opposition from fellow supervisors, law enforcement, prosecutors and even the ACLU.
The sweeping proposal, also backed by newly elected Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath, was scheduled to be discussed at the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, April 4. However, Solis pulled the item from the board’s agenda.
Since details of the plan became public, Solis said, “My office has received concerns from a variety of stakeholders — those who feel the motion is not doing enough and those who feel it is doing too much. To that end, I will be referring the motion back to my office so that I can continue to gather input from all stakeholders.”
The goal now, she said, is to “balance the needs of public safety while also getting into compliance with our federal obligations. And in that process, I ask that county departments and agencies help us with meeting the need of our most vulnerable.”
Calling jail conditions “horrid and inhumane,” Solis noted that Los Angeles County is subject to several federal consent decrees and settlement agreements, “including those regarding the treatment provided for incarcerated people with mental health needs and severe overcrowding in county jails, including Men’s Central Jail.”
The plan aimed to declare a “humanitarian crisis” in the jails and advocate for or instruct several county agencies to evaluate, create and expand programs that would keep more people out of a jail, even after they are convicted of misdemeanors and some felonies.
“To depopulate and decarcerate is a monumental task, and the Board is committed to redress historical wrongs, deeply rooted in systemic racism and prejudice, and reverse status quo responses to poverty, mental health and medical needs, and substance use dependencies,” Solis and Horvath wrote in their motion.
The Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association said in a statement that it was blindsided by the proposal, only learning about it on Friday. Officials with the organization could not be reached for comment, but their statement said the plan would “exacerbate our current plight” in tackling surging crime.
Early Monday, Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Janice Hahn said they would not support the proposal, while Horvath and Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell could not be reached for comment.
“This board has taken steps to divert people from our jails safely, but Men’s Central Jail continues to be overcrowded and dangerous for both our inmates and our deputies,” Hahn said in a statement Monday. “That being said, I have concerns with this proposal and its potential impact on public safety, and I cannot support it. Any plan to reduce the population of our jails needs to be decided in partnership with law enforcement, our deputy district attorneys, and our courts.”
Eric Siddall, vice president of the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys, who described Solis’ motion as “dangerous and reckless,” applauded Barger and Hahn for their opposition.
“We appreciate Supervisor Hahn’s and Supervisor Barger’s leadership here and for their willingness to join our members in recognizing that the time for applying short-term patches to a festering, decades-old problems is over,” Siddall said in a statement. “We look forward to working together with them on addressing these issues.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said it is satisfied with Solis’ withdrawal of the motion, noting that it didn’t address underlying problems at the jail.
“The motion failed to provide a deadline for closing Men’s Central Jail and fails to address the core issue plaguing the jails: gross overcrowding that leads to people with severe mental illness being shoved by the hundreds into unsafe housing, without access to psychotropic medication, and living without adequate food, showers, or basic hygiene,” said Melissa Camacho, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU.
The only way the county can comply with federal decrees is to create thousands of mental health beds in the community, Camacho said.
Solis said the plan to depopulate and decarcerate the county’s jails represented an attempt to strike a balance between advocates for both public safety and social justice.
“Additionally, with the federal consent decrees and settlement agreements, including a potential receivership from the state, I felt this move was necessary,” Solis said. “The intention behind my motion was for the Board of Supervisors to use the limited authority it has to safely depopulate.”
Specifically, the plan called for:
- Giving the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department authority to use electronic monitoring as an alternative to incarceration.
- Advocating for the Los Angeles Superior Court to support the county in its pursuit of “care first” as it once did when it adopted a statewide COVID-19 emergency bail schedule.
- Requesting the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to take back inmates who are serving out their prison sentences in county jails. That number includes about 10% of the total LA County jail population and will help ease overcrowding, Solis said.
- Advocating for legislative changes at the state level so that those who are medically fragile can be eligible for compassionate release.
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who frequently clashed with the Board of Supervisors during his tenure, described Solis’ proposal as “dumb” and a page from the progressive “playbook.”
“We told them that you can’t close the jail without a replacement facility, but they doubled down,” he said Monday. “They are driven by ideology and not reality.”
Villanueva added that releasing about 4,500 mostly violent offenders onto Los Angeles County streets without an alternative to house them is “insane.”
The former sheriff, who was defeated in the November election by retired Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna, supports the construction of several smaller decentralized, secure facilities throughout the county to provide inmates with an array of mental health services.
“We need to increase (housing) capacity to treat them in lockdown facilities so they can’t leave,” Villanueva said. “Some people are a danger to society.”
In 2019, county supervisors canceled a $1.7 billion contract to construct a downtown mental health treatment center to replace Men’s Central Jail.
At the time, Dignity & Power Now, the Youth Justice Coalition, Critical Resistance, the ACLU, and Californians United for Responsible Budgets called the planned facility a jail masquerading as a hospital, and urged the supervisors to build smaller treatment facilities scattered throughout the county.
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Plan to depopulate jails needs more work, involvement from stakeholders, Supervisors say.