The living hell of Los Angeles jails

Four U.S. senators condemned the state of Los Angeles County jails in an October 2022 letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The senators — California's Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, along with Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — described the conditions of jails in our county as “appalling” and a “humanitarian crisis.”

Indeed, the county's jails have long been the subject of scrutiny. A decade ago, a massive federal investigation that included intense criticism of the jails resulted in criminal charges against over 20 members of the Sheriff's Department, with notable convictions of former Sheriff Lee Baca and former Undersheriff and Mayor of Gardena Paul Tanaka.

That's clearly one of the more horrific aspects of the senators' new condemnation — that 10 years have passed since the federal probe, and that conditions are still so bad. And, really, the feds have had their eyes on the jails here since the mid-1990s, and nothing has improved.

In a “blistering” letter to Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland, the senators “described conditions in L.A. County's jails as a `humanitarian crisis' and `appalling,'” Keri Blakinger writes in the Times. “They cited reports of people routinely chained to chairs, denied medications, forced to urinate in sinks and left to sit in their own feces.”

“The DOJ's failure to correct or prevent the constitutional and human rights violations in facilities that are under consent decrees undermines the Department's broader efforts, as well as the public's faith and confidence in our legal system,” the senators wrote in the letter.

The Justice Department's response? “We are aware of the request from the Senators, but do not have any comment at this time,” a spokeswoman wrote in an email.

For those of us who actually live in Los Angeles County, who pay the taxes that support the hellhole that is the Twin Towers, while we can agree that federal oversight action is again needed, our eyes turn to something closer to home: the Sheriff's Department that runs the jails. For newly elected Sheriff Robert Luna, along with protecting the public safety, there can be no more urgent duty than marching in and putting a stop to medieval conditions.