Barbaric and Deadly Conditions Continue to Plague Los Angeles County Jails
Horrendous conditions inside Los Angeles County Jails, described as “barbaric” in a recent law suit, continue to plague those facilities and at least 122 detainee deaths since January 2023 show these conditions are deadly. Those unfortunate enough to be confined in an LA County Jail explain that the nightmare begins with the initial processing at intake where conditions are “a living hell.”
Detainees are forced to sleep without a bed or a blanket. Instead, they must sleep on floors that are covered with garbage and waste. Because the Jails are overcrowded—operating at 9 percent above capacity—medical and mental health care are woefully inadequate. The lack of mental health care is especially appalling in light of the fact that the LA County Jails are said to be “the largest mental health institution in the United States” with 49% of those detained in 2025 having been diagnosed with mental illness. With such a large population of people in need of mental health treatment, it is beyond egregious that 44% of the Jails’ mental health staff positions remain vacant. Instead of proper treatment, these detainees are chained to tables for hours with some of them not even provided clothing.
Evidence suggests jail staff are indifferent at best. A video smuggled out of the Men’s Central Jail in June 2023 showed Jail staff refusing to intervene in a violent assault that lasted for more than ten minutes. An inspector general’s report on a detainee who died inside an LA County Jail revealed that the deceased person showed signs of hypothermia. At the time of the death, detainees were sleeping on the floor in garbage bags in an effort to stay warm, even though the Jail had “hundreds of thousands of thermal underwear sets available.” Jail officials refused to distribute the thermal underwear, stating they “were not required to do so” and that they “were concerned people would destroy or misuse” the underwear.
The squalid conditions inside the LA County Jails provoked a visit in April 2023 from a panel appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. The following month, facility healthcare workers protested that staffing shortages left them “unable to provide care to patients in these dangerously overcrowded facilities.”
In June 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) settled a suit with the County over the conditions inside the Jails. Among the terms of the settlement, the County has agreed to limit how long people may be detained in the intake units and how long those people may be chained to chairs and benches. The County also must divert people to alternatives in lieu of incarceration.
Additionally, the County agreed to add another 2,000 beds to house people in “community-based supportive housing.” On average, it costs $207 per day to house a person in a housing program versus the $548 per day to incarcerate that person in a mental health unit. And 86% of the participants in one housing program had no new felony convictions after 12 months while 74% retained stable housing.
But these settlement terms and commitments are of meaning only if the County honors them. In 2021, the County’s leaders pledged to close the decrepit and dangerous Men’s Central Jail within two years. But as of January 2026, that facility still operates.
Highlighting how the County has yet to fully follow through on its mandated improvements, 2025 was a particularly deadly year for the jail system, with 46 people dying in custody—nearly one death per week. Out of the County’s nine facilities, 25% of the system’s custodial deaths between 2023 and 2025 occurred at the Men’s Central Jail. The dozens of deaths represent a 44% increase from 2024, when 32 detainees died across Los Angeles County. While most of the deaths were ascribed to natural causes, that does not mean that the County was not responsible. “It’s tragically not surprising or shocking to learn that each year the jail continues to produce high numbers of people who are dying,” Terence Keel, a University of California, Los Angeles professor, told Los Angeles Public Press. Keel co-published a 2022 study that found half of all jail deaths from 2009 to 2019 labelled as natural included signs of physical violence. “Can we actually die naturally while in jail? I don’t believe we can. When you become a ward … the state is responsible for every aspect of your life,” Keel added.
Relatedly, in September 2025, California state Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County, the Sheriff’s Department (LASD), and the County Correctional Health Services (CHS) over “unconstitutional and inhumane conditions” at the County jails. The lawsuit describes jail cells as filthy and with “broken and overflowing toilets, infestations of rats and roaches, and no clean water for drinking or bathing”; it also claims that 37.5% of all custodial deaths in the County over the past decade were preventable.
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