L.A. SUPERVISORS MUST REPLACE MEN’S CENTRAL JAIL
By Joseph Charney
For over a decade the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has been tasked with replacing the aging and decrepit Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles with a facility containing sufficient beds and treatment modules to handle the increasing number of inmates suffering from mental illness.
The county has invested millions of dollars hiring qualified consultants and expending thousands of staff hours securing recommendations and building plans. The board found the first consultant’s recommendation too expansive and proceeded to hire one specializing in constructing jail treatment facilities. The new consultant projected the need for even more beds than the prior consultant and predicted an increasing number of inmates suffering some form of mental illness.
The board has ignored the recommendations of its chosen consultants and now inexplicably concludes that a facility is no longer needed. It does so without providing a realistic alternative to the construction of a replacement facility.
For years, activists have come before the board demanding an end to all incarceration and the need to replace “cages” by diverting the “justice-involved” into treatment facilities. With the passage of time, the board has increasingly endorsed this demagoguery, denying ten million county residents an essential tool for public safety. It did not refute its consultants’ recommendations with evidence, but rather has dismissed them as being “out of date.”
While the board now claims that there are sufficient alternatives to incarceration, its members have failed to identify the nature of the crimes that could and should warrant such an alternative.
Our system of criminal justice has many components, all of which are essential if we are to insure its integrity. Duly elected legislators enact laws enumerating crimes and the punishment for violations. Law enforcement is tasked to enforce these laws fairly and vigorously in an effort to protect lives and property. We have prosecutors, defense counsel and judges to oversee court procedure and impanel citizen juries from the community. When pleas and convictions occur, defendants are sentenced, and it is at this point that our jail and prison system come into play. Only when each part of the system is sufficiently resourced and administered can justice be served. Without competent defense counsel there is no justice for the accused. Without sufficient consequences for the commission of violent and serious felonies there can be no justice for victims and the community.
When the board fails to build a jail that can house and treat mentally ill inmates who have committed such violent and serious felonies, the board substitutes its own notion of justice, punishment and public safety for that promulgated by the Legislature, enforced by our police agencies and secured through our court system.
Few inmates presently incarcerated are eligible for mental health treatment through diversion. The jail no longer houses those who commit minor crimes, causing many who suffer mental illness to live unsheltered on our streets. The vast majority of those presently in need of mental health treatment in county jails are incarcerated for serious or violent offenses and are ineligible for diversion. Yet, despite this reality, well-organized demonstrators continue to pack the boardroom claiming that diversion eliminates the need for a new facility.
What the board never hears are the voices of the thousands who can’t afford to spend a half day to voice their support for the construction of a new jail. Constituents expect that an inmate, convicted of murder, rape, robbery or other serious felonies, must secure mental health treatment in the confines of a locked jail or prison facility. Unlike the mentally ill living in wretched street encampments, inmates have the constitutional right to medical and mental health treatment. Again, where will this treatment be provided after you tear down Men’s Central?
While advocates may ignore reality and the interests of the vast majority of L.A.’s residents, the LA County Board of Supervisors must not. The Board is expected to make mature, fact based, and well-reasoned decisions using the expertise and data at its disposal. In the case of a treatment facility to replace Men’s Central Jail, the Board has squandered precious time and resources by kicking the “jail replacement can” down the road. This is dereliction of duty.
Men’s Central, built more than half a century ago, must be torn down and replaced. This should have happened years ago. Reason, public safety, and justice demand it be done now.
Joseph Charney served as Justice Deputy for former Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.
