Faced with Record-Breaking Jail Deaths, L.A. County Supervisors Tell Sheriff’s Department to Improve Access to Naloxone, Camera Monitoring, and Security Checks at California Jail
by Matt Clarke
On March 3, 2026, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 to approve a motion by Supervisor Janice Hahn to require the Sheriff’s Department to increase access in the jail to Naloxone (an opiate-overdose-reversing drug), more closely monitor the jail’s cameras, and improve security checks. The motion was in response to the record-breaking number of prisoner and detainee deaths at the jail, ten in the first two months of 2026 alone.
“If we don’t address this now, we will see another record year of deaths in the County jails—a record we do not want to repeat,” Hahn wrote in the motion. The previous record was 46 in-Custody deaths in 2025, up from 32 in 2024. Nine of the deaths were in the first two months of 2025.
Supervisor Kathryn Berger abstained from the vote because she believes the death rate cannot be addressed without the construction of a new jail. “We must be honest about the limitations of facilities that were never designed to house today’s population,” said Berger. “I have consistently called for a modern replacement facility focused on treatment and rehabilitation because that is where the real solution lies.”
Over four years ago, the Board of Supervisors voted to close the Men’s Central Jail due to its dangerous and deteriorating condition, yet made no provision for a replacement. Thus, the infamous lockup continues to be used by the Sheriff’s Department.
Los Angeles’s jail system is the nation’s largest, with 12,428 prisoners and detainees as of June 2024. About half of them are housed in downtown Los Angeles at the infamously violent Men’s Central Jail and the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. The rest are housed in five other jails, including the two most crowded: North County Correctional Facility, where 3,056 men are held in a jail designed to hold 2,214, and Pitchess Detention Center-North, holding 1,182 but designed for 830. [See: PLN, May 2025, p.18.]
In September 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department alleging people being held in its jails “are forced to live in filthy cells with broken and overflowing toilets, infestations of rats and roaches, and no clean water for drinking or bathing.” Bonta also said a lack of medical and mental health care led to “a shocking rate of deaths inside the jails, many of which are caused by preventable circumstances, such as overdoses, suicides, or violence among incarcerated persons.”
Complicating jail administration is the fact that 45% of people held there have been diagnosed with mental health conditions, yet 44% of the jail’s mental health care worker positions were vacant in 2025. This shortage has severe consequences for the mentally ill even at intake where, in December 2023, a federal judge had to order the Sheriff’s Department to cease leaving mentally ill arrestees chained to benches overnight. [See: PLN, Apr. 2024, p.16.]
Sadly, this situation is all too common—local officials recognize the manifold problems at the jail but are unwilling to spend the money necessary to correct the problems by constructing a new jail facility. This regrettable situation will likely continue until either the state forces the county to act or the family of one or more of the victims of a preventable jail death wins a large award in a lawsuit. Meanwhile, the March 3 motion will likely prove to be little more than a band aid placed on a gaping wound.
Source: Los Angeles Times
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