By Joseph P. Charney In 2013, the Los Angeles County budget was 26 billion dollars. Today, it’s 43 billion dollars. What has the County government accomplished over the past ten years with this huge and ever-increasing expenditure? Has there been a reduction of homelessness and encampments? Are there less mentally…

BY Joseph P. Charney Mental health diversion has been touted as a vehicle by which incarcerated LA County inmates can be released from jail and supervised out of custody. The LA County Board of Supervisors cites a 2020 Rand Report that concluded that 60 percent of the thousands of mentally…

Joseph P. Charney LA County Supervisors, Horvath and Solis drafted a motion to depopulate the LA County jails of thousands of inmates by declaring a “humanitarian crisis”. …

By Joseph P. Charney After decades of failing to fulfill its Constitutional obligations to those seriously mentally ill inmates residing in LA Jails , the Department of Justice (DOJ) forced the County to enter into a Federal Consent Decree in 2015. Since then, the DOJ has attempted to secure compliance…

By Joseph P. Charney According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, the highest ranking chess player of all times, Magnus Carlson, has placed his world champion chess matches on hold to play Texas Hold’Em poker. He appears to be successful at this new endeavor. It isn’t clear why…

By Joseph P. Charney In 2019 the ACLU, and other anti-jail advocates, urged the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors to end the county’s plan to construct a jail replacement facility. That facility would have ensured compliance with a Department of Justice (DOJ) initiated 2015 consent decree that addressed the inadequate…

By Joseph P. Charney If you want to get the answer to a simple math problem, inject the right numbers in the right places. “Solving” is a notion that is associated with a problem that has “an answer”. Most challenges of government involve tradeoffs. Where math requires specificity of inputs…

By Joseph P. Charney On August 19th, Federal Judge Dean Pregerson called up the matter of the United States of America versus Los Angeles County. The case concerns the County’s obligation under a 2015 Consent Decree to provide constitutional care and housing for thousands of inmates suffering serious mental illness…

By Joseph P. Charney At the beginning of the 17th century, the idea that the earth revolved around the sun was a theory. Galileo looked through his telescope and turned theory into fact upending church dogma with observation. Fast forward 400 years to LA County where tens of thousands live…