LA County reports significant improvement in wait times and conditions at a troubled jail complex

Los Angeles County officials are reporting significant improvements in wait times and conditions at a county jail facility that has been plagued by a number of issues in recent years.

For the last six months, the Inmate Reception Center at the downtown L.A. jail complex has been in compliance with court requirements that incarcerated people wait no longer than 24 hours in the facility. According to the county Sheriff’s Department, some 120,000 people are processed into and out of the county jail system there each year.

County officials also said the center has improved its cleanliness and the speed at which people with mental health conditions receive treatment and medication.

Maggie Carter, chief Department of Justice Compliance Officer for L.A. County, said the improvements show “serious progress.”

“I absolutely see it as a milestone showing that the county and the department can fix big, difficult, complicated, intractable problems,” Carter told LAist.

The ‘shocking conditions’ that spurred change

The problems at the IRC date to at least the summer of 2021. That’s when Cathleen Beltz, then assistant inspector general, told the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission that she investigated a tip about overcrowding within the facility.

She said she discovered that on one day in August, there were 22 “front bench” patients — people who come in with psychiatric distress or drug or alcohol intoxication or withdrawal — who had been tethered with handcuffs and chains for nearly 24 hours while waiting for a bed.

In fall of 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court to order immediate improvements to what it called “abysmal” conditions at the IRC.

An altered photo from an ACLU court filing shows incarcerated people sleeping upright in chairs or on the floor at the Inmate Reception Center in downtown L.A.

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American Civil Liberties Union

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Attorneys with the ACLU who visited the facility alleged they observed “shocking conditions” back then, including people with serious mental illness chained to chairs for days at a time, people defecating in trash cans and urinating on the floor as well as failures to provide people with adequate healthcare.

How the county addressed the issues

Carter said someone touring the IRC today would see a very different scene.

She said that although there have been some setbacks, the facility is cleaner and people are not languishing there for nearly as long.

Carter pointed to the development of a “Shared Intake Management System” that helps keep custody staff, nursing and mental health professionals on the same page.

Other improvements leading to the better conditions include:

• Increased Correctional Health Services staff providing mental health services at the IRC.
• Having compliance efforts monitored 24/7 by a sergeant.
• More cleaning crews and sanitation checks. 

The county said it has also “expanded the network of community treatment beds for those who can be safely released from jail and treated in the community.”

Officials said the LA County Department of Mental Health added a total of 168 treatment beds over the past two fiscal years.

In all, departments across the county added around 1,700 treatment beds within the same timeframe.

Melissa Camacho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California who regularly monitors the jails, said the reduction in population in part due to the efforts of ODR played a major role in the improved conditions and wait times.

“That’s really when we saw things turn around in the IRC and people not languishing in there because they were able to be processed quickly enough with the amount of mental health and medical staff that were there. And they simply had a place to go after the IRC,” Camacho said.

Concerns about rising jail population

But with the jail population on the rise again, Camacho and Carter are concerned that the improvements at the IRC will hold.

They both pointed to the implementation of Proposition 36 as one factor in rising population numbers.

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.

In May, LAist reported that the overall jail population had increased nearly 4% since late last year, in part because of more arrests related to the proposition that voters approved last year.

“Many in the county including the Sheriff’s Department are tracking individuals in the jails who have been arrested on a Prop. 36-related charge. That number has steadily climbed ever since the law went into effect,” Carter said this week.

Though Camacho said she was also concerned the IRC could see a real setback if the jail population rises too much, she noted that conditions there were “night and day to what they were ... in 2022.”

Camacho said this should show the county that change is possible, even within a jail system that has been plagued by serious issues.

“I feel like they should take what they learned at the IRC and be able to apply those lessons elsewhere. Don’t wait for the court to require you to do so,” she said.