In 2021, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to shut down Men’s Central Jail because of inhumane conditions that some describe as “living hell.” Now, 26 months later, the jail still stands with no talk of closing it anytime soon.
“Men’s Central Jail should have been closed five years ago, but it is still open due to politics, red tape, and government finances that prioritize funding for the Sheriff’s Office,” Eddie Jones, president of the Los Angeles Civil Rights Association, said. “It creates jobs for them, but it also fosters a harmful environment.”
Jones said he saw incarcerated people sleeping on cold steel, receiving subpar meals, and unable to access the infirmary for medical check-ups during his last visit.
Incarcerated people “are in pain, hurting,” Jones said. Sheriff’s deputies “just look at them as if they were nobody.”
On September 12, a protest took place just before the Board of Supervisors’ meeting, with a crowd rallied outside the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration in downtown Los Angeles. They demanded the closure of the jail and an end to in-custody deaths.
Thirty-two men died in the county jail system this year, with 13 occurring at Men’s Central Jail, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.
Advocates for incarcerated individuals have been urging the Board of Supervisors to address the unprecedented deaths and close down the 70-year-old jail.
“It’s like a seaman’s slave ship. That’s exactly what it’s like,” Helen Jones, a community organizer and mother of a person who died in custody, said. “Built the same exact way. It’s just a straight dungeon, and it’s horrific.”
The American Civil Liberties Union reports that the Los Angeles Men’s Central Jail routinely denies clean water, functioning toilets, showers, adequate food and essential medication to most incarcerated people, many of whom are awaiting trial and have not been convicted.
Dignity and Power Now is a Los Angeles-based grassroots organization founded in 2012 that “fights for the dignity and power of all incarcerated people, their families, and communities.”
Ambrose Brooks, one of the group’s organizers and policy analysts, believes that the jail tears communities and families apart.
“I think that if we are trying to build a world based on compassion and care for one another, we have to shut down the jails,” they said.
In 2017, the organization successfully pushed the County to cancel a $3.5 billion expansion of Men’s Central Jail, according to the advocacy group’s website.
But that was six years ago.
“There is a lack of political will on the part of the Board of Supervisors. There is also an insufficient budget allocation to fund the pathways that would facilitate jail closure,” she said. “In L.A. County, there’s an overinvestment in the Sheriff’s Department, the district attorney’s office, LAPD, and the jails themselves.”
Earlier this year, the LA County Board of Supervisors approved a $43.4 billion budget, with $4 billion going to the Sheriff’s Department.
“The Sheriff’s Department is not interested in the jail closing because it gives them jobs,” Brooks said.
When asked whether potential job losses factor into decisions on closing the jail, Sheriff’s Department Commander Paula Tokar said in an email,
“It is difficult to predict what impact the closure of the jail may have on jobs. Currently, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and our health care partners are experiencing critical staffing shortages.”
“When you’re in jail, you’re supposed to receive rehabilitation, rejuvenation, restoration and revitalization of your life so that when you come out, you’re a better, more productive citizen.” Eddie Jones said.”However, those things are not being done.”
Jones said the money allocated to the jail could be redirected to educate incarcerated people, help them improve their academic qualifications and gain job skills.
Brooks, of Dignity and Power Now, said the responsibility for closing the jail falls within the job purview of the elected supervisors.
“The Board of Supervisors has passed the responsibility around. Some of them don’t believe it’s their duty to close the jails. But I think that’s fundamentally false,” she said. “The Board of Supervisors is the bottom line for the L.A. County budget, so they certainly have control over how the money is spent.”
When the board initially voted to close the jail, County Supervisor Hilda Solis, who co-authored the motion to shut down MCJ, said it was time to stop studying the issue and take action. Her office, when contacted after the September protests advocating for the facility’s closure, declined to provide a comment.
The sole conservative vote came from Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s office. Her primary argument against closing the jail centered on the need for a viable alternative to be in place before making such a decision.
“Our office is very persistent in believing that we will need a replacement facility, even if we’re alone in that stance,” Sandra Croxton, a justice deputy with Supervisor Barger’s office, said. “There are a lot of moving pieces that need to be put in place.”
The board of supervisors established an Alternatives to Incarceration Task Force to develop a plan to close the jail within one year. However, the task force made no concrete decisions and was absorbed into a newly created department under the county, the Justice, Care and Community Department .
In response to queries about the closure of Men’s Central Jail, the office shared publicly available links and said it would provide “no further comment.”
The largest jail system in the world is just under six miles from the University of Southern California. It houses over 20,000 individuals, with Men’s Central housing about one-fourth of this population, and the jail is facing a significant challenge of overcrowding.
The current state of the jail system reveals an operational capacity exceeding its limits, with an average approximately 2.8 percent and alarming spikes, reaching as high as 16 percent at certain points this year, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. The Justice LA coalition demanded that the board shut down MCJ without a replacement facility by reducing its existing population of 13000 to 8500. The capacity of the jail itself is 5640 incarcerated people.
Furthermore, their research revealed “squalid and cramped conditions,” with people who have passed through the intake facilities describing them as “a living hell.”
“They don’t deserve to be mistreated. They’re human beings. They have civil rights, they have constitutional rights, and they have human rights,” Jones said.
Jones believes that grassroots organizations and advocacy groups are doing more than elected officials to address the closure of Men’s Central Jail.
Brooks agrees.
“One of the most meaningful things that has happened recently has nothing to do with the Board of Supervisors. It was a couple of lawsuits brought against L.A. County, one of which challenged what’s called the pre-arraignment bail schedules,” she said.
More than 40% of incarcerated people in L.A. County jails are pretrial detainees who have not been sentenced for any crimes. Many of them are held in custody because they cannot afford to pay bail. A lawsuit against L.A. County prompted changes to the bail schedule, which may lead to a reduction in the pretrial jail population, according to Brooks. This change took effect on October 1, 2023. The change aims to address the inequality of money bail, replacing fixed amounts with release conditions based on an arrestee’s risk factors, consistent with constitutional considerations and aligning with national precedents in pretrial detention reform.
“We need to create a bill; all the grassroots organizations, Dignity and Power Now, the coalition, the Los Angeles Civil Rights Association — we can become a conglomerate, and what we do is create a bill,” said Jones, president of the LA Civil Rights Association. .
Jones said the governor and Congress also need to get involved.
Regarding the Board of Supervisors’ actions, Jones believes there needs to be a new facility to replace the existing one.
“There’s so much land in Los Angeles, there are so many abandoned buildings and land. It’s big enough to build this facility on,” he said. “It’s just a matter of the city and the county coming together and using those finances to build a new place.”
This story is a part of the Justice Reporting Project, created through a Journalism class by student journalists in the Annenberg Media Center, with the goal of broadening traditional crime reporting. Edited by Professors Lauren Lee White and Alan Mittelstaedt.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story referred to incarcerated people as inmates. The language has been updated to reflect our style guidelines.