Los Angeles County Jails Record Almost One Death Every Nine Days
Los Angeles County jails counted 87 deaths of prisoners and detainees in 813 days since the beginning of 2023, according to a report by the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice on March 25, 2025. The high mortality rate was blamed on neglect and poor conditions, which can be traced to severe overcrowding that saw some facilities in the jail system near or surpass 150% of capacity.
Things aren’t likely to improve soon either, as provisions passed in November 2023’s Proposition 36 ballot initiative took effect at the beginning of January 2025. The measure raised sentences for some low-level crimes typically punished with a sentence in jail. It also cut funding for drug and mental health treatment, victim services and preventing homelessness.
The jail system is the country’s largest, holding 12,428 prisoners and detainees at the end of June 2024. Almost half were confined in the Men’s Central Jail and the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles. The rest were spread between the County’s other five lockups, including its two most crowded; the North County Correctional Facility in Pasaic, which held 3,056 men in a space designed for 2,214, and the nearby Pitchess Detention Center-North, which crammed 1,181 into a space for 830.
Some 45% of all those in jail had diagnosed mental health conditions. But a similar share of mental health worker positions—44%—remained vacant. Backups began at intake, where a federal court had to order the County in December 2023 not to leave mentally ill arrestees chained to benches overnight, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2024, p.16.]
Little was known about the deaths. Names were available only for the first 36, and those were obtained by journalist Keri Blakinger through a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). That list was also incomplete, missing the name of former NFL player Stanley Wilson Jr., whose February 2023 death fell within the time period covered by Blakinger’s FOIA request.
The specific cause of most deaths remained murky, too, with at least half that were classified as “natural” showing signs of physical harm, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Jan. 2023, p.52.] For those trying to survive, a shortage of guards left detainees and prisoners locked down in their cells with inadequate access to medical care, recreation and programming—many even missed court dates. Yet a group of guards were caught watching porn when oversight inspectors showed up. [See: PLN, Aug. 2024, p.19.]
“Our jails are killing people—disproportionately Black and Latino men who are held pretrial,” said Vera’s California Program Director Michelle Parris. The community would be safer, she added, “investing in community-based alternatives to incarceration that are proven to work, and that do not result in a new death every week.”
Source: Vera Institute of Justice
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login