LA County's jail population is rising. Prop 36 is partly to blame

Los Angeles County’s overall jail population has increased nearly 4% since late last year, in part because of more arrests related to a voter-approved proposition that allowed police to once again arrest people accused of certain low-level drug and theft crimes.

It’s a relatively small increase — roughly 500 incarcerated people — but it could indicate what is to come now that Proposition 36 is California law.

The county Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jails, and county officials tasked with moving people out of the crumbling Men’s Central Jail in downtown L.A., said they're watching the jail population growth closely as it could make it harder to meet their needs.

It could also strain the department’s ability to serve people’s specific mental health needs even further. About 45% of the overall jail population are living with mental health issues, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

“We are going in the wrong direction,” said Wilford Pinkney, executive director of the Community Safety Implementation Team, which is responsible for figuring out how to safely move people out of the Men’s Central Jail and eventually close it.

“We’re going to have to continue to look at strategies to address any increase in the jail population, whether it’s from Prop. 36 or anything else,” Pinkney told the Board of Supervisors last month.

The Sheriff’s Department told LAist that, so far, the population increase has not affected jail operations or required more staff. But department authorities said they were watching the population growth “very closely.”

“We are concerned that if the [increase] compounds over time the availability of specialized medical and mental health housing will be adversely impacted,” the department said.

Effects of Proposition 36

Proposition 36 increased criminal penalties for certain drug and theft crimes, including allowing felony charges for theft crimes under $950. It was a response to an increase in petty theft, shoplifting and smash-and-grab robberies across California.

The measure rolled back the reforms of historic Proposition 47, passed by voters in 2014, which was aimed at reducing prison populations by reclassifying some low-level drug and property offenses from felonies to misdemeanors.

After Prop. 47, jail and prison populations around the state dropped by 30%, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

On average, 35 people per week enter county jail on Prop. 36-related charges as the most serious offense, according to a report from Pinkney and his team.

In December, there were 12 people in custody on Prop. 36-related offenses; that number jumped to 403 as of mid-March. And the report points out that 35% to 40% of those people required specialty mental health housing.

“If the impact of Proposition 36 continues in this way, County jail will return to overcrowding and prevent the closure of [Men’s Central Jail],” the report states.

Mental health population rising

County officials and criminal justice reform advocates say they worry that rising numbers of people in the jails who have mental health conditions could hamper the county’s attempts to make good on a years-old promise to close the decrepit Men’s Central Jail.

“We do not have place to put people — especially with mental health needs — in the jail. We’re full up,” Melissa Camacho, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, told LAist.

According to the latest report from the Community Safety Implementation Team, the population of people requiring moderate and high observation mental health housing in the jails has gone up 76% since January of last year.

Pinkney, who heads the county’s jail closure team, said about 900 of the roughly 3,600 people incarcerated at Men’s Central Jail are in mental health housing. That facility, he said, isn’t structured to effectively treat them.

Last January, L.A. County Supervisors considered a five-year timeline to close the facility that community activists said wasn’t fast enough. That plan called for 1,200 new mental health and supportive housing beds per year and for the courts to find a way to safely release an additional 7,000 people a year, among other provisions.

“Right now, it appears to be that the rate of people coming into the system is exceeding, by a lot, the people that are being removed from the system,” Pinkney told LAist.

If the mental health population, which accounts for nearly half the population within the jails, is increasing consistently, “then it’s going to negatively impact and make our job that much harder,” Pinkney said.

Prop. 36 allows for treatment-mandated felonies to be fully expunged if the offender successfully completes drug and mental health treatment. But officials said it's too early to know if a sufficient number of people will be diverted into treatment to reduce the jail population.

A long-delayed closure of an ‘unsafe’ facility

It’s been more than four years since L.A. County received a plan to close the aging downtown Men’s Central Jail. The 145-page proposal called the facility "unsafe, crowded and crumbling."

The report offered a three-pronged strategy for shutting down the more than 60-year-old facility prepared by a workgroup led by the county Office of Diversion and Reentry and the Sheriff’s Department, in partnership with community groups and service providers.

The plan called for:

• Redistributing the Men’s Central Jail population to other jails
• Investing “significantly” in beds and services within the community
• Diverting  4,500 people with mental health issues out of jail

The proposal said it would require a large investment in expanded community mental health and substance use services before L.A. County will be able to close the jail. The authors of the report also estimated it would take up to two years to get it done, a suggested timeline that has long expired.

County supervisors have said it has taken too long to close the facility.

“This effort has languished for far too long and it has harmed far too many people,” Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said during the board’s meeting on April 8.

Of particular concern for county officials and criminal justice reform advocates have been the number of deaths this year within the overall jail system. There had been at least 16 in-custody deaths as of early April when the supervisors discussed the issue; by the same time last year there were eight.

At least four of the deaths this year have been attributed to drug overdoses.

“It is a source of shame, I think, for all of us in the county family, to continue to operate a jail where this year we have had 16 deaths inside,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said.

The number of deaths reported in L.A. County jails has since risen to 18, five of which happened at Men’s Central Jail. The county Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet released the final results of the autopsies on the majority of those cases.

A 2006 report commissioned by the county found that the structure itself, built in 1963, could be extremely dangerous in the event of an earthquake because of inadequate reinforcements and outdated construction methods. The report recommended that the structure be fully replaced.

Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel with the ACLU of Southern California, has called Men’s Central Jail “a modern-day medieval dungeon, a dank, windowless place where prisoners live in fear of retaliation and abuse apparently goes unchecked.”

Jail monitors appointed by the county have pointed to insufficient mental health care within the facility. An LAist investigation in 2023 found an increase in the number of suicide deaths at Men’s Central Jail and the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, both located within the downtown L.A. jail complex.

The family of Mark Carrillo, who died by suicide in a cell at Men’s Central Jail in 2021, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the county which was settled for $2.5 million. Carrillo, the complaint alleges, “had a known mental health illness and known suicidal ideations, he was not given medication, nor was treated properly by a psychiatrist. He was simply left to languish.”

For years, local activist groups, including Justice LA and Dignity and Power Now, have been pushing elected leaders to close Men’s Central Jail. Among other things, they point to a wide range of reports from county inspectors and incarcerated people who point to problems including broken toilets, leaking pipes, rats and cockroaches in cells.

Janet Asante, an organizer with Dignity and Power Now, said that while she was glad to see the county build a team dedicated to closing the jail, the county continues to fail its most vulnerable.

“The situation that we’re in stems from the fact that this county Board of Supervisors has not either funded or brought online mental health placements,” Asante said. “We’ve always known that [Men’s Central Jail] is deadly. But I also think it’s important to point out that the conditions and the cruelty inside of the jail itself is making people be at a higher acuity of mental health needs.”