Few things could be worse than ending up in jail; few jobs tougher than guarding the incarcerated. They’re troubled, they’re in trouble, and many are mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs and alcohol, coming down.
As UCLA scholar Terence Keel told our investigative reporters Jason Henry, Tony Saavedra and Joe Nelson for their series “Death behind bars: Who’s dying in Southern California county jails — and why,” “There are very few other institutions that can mimic the stress and danger of a jail … The truth is that jails are violent, dangerous places, and they’ve always been.”
So while prisoners in our county jails are seldom healthy when they arrive there, and are not the easiest guests to care for, that doesn’t mean they deserve to die in custody. They have not been sentenced to capital punishment. And yet in our four contiguous counties, Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside, 478 prisoners have died in jail in the last five years, one every five days on average. And here in Los Angeles County, state Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit in September against the Sheriff’s Department for inhumane treatment of inmates.
The “Death behind bars” investigation shows that across the Southland jailhouse deaths are going down from high early pandemic levels. Troublingly, though, in L.A. County the rate of death per thousand inmates is actually going up: “on track to have one of its deadliest years — potentially the deadliest — in the past two decades, data shows. The county averaged about one death per week until the most recent fatality in early November.” The Sheriff’s Department says one factor is that the inmate population now is “older and faces more chronic medical and mental health issues than ever before.”
We’re sure that’s true. But we’re also sure that regarding the 20 deaths this year in our county jail from “natural causes,” healthcare there is abysmal. And re the 10 deaths from drug overdoses: Someone allowed the drugs to be smuggled in. Plus, as the County Office of Inspector General warns: “Overcrowding in the Los Angeles County jails continues to jeopardize the ability of the Sheriff’s Department to provide humane conditions of confinement.” The jails are in nothing less than crisis, and crisis demands response.