County officials also said the center has improved its cleanliness and the speed at which people with mental health conditions receive treatment and medication.<\/p>\n
Maggie Carter, chief Department of Justice Compliance Officer for L.A. County<\/a>, said the improvements show \u201cserious progress.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI absolutely see it as a milestone showing that the county and the department can fix big, difficult, complicated, intractable problems,\u201d Carter told LAist.<\/p>\n The \u2018shocking conditions\u2019 that spurred change<\/p>\n The problems at the IRC date to at least the summer of 2021. That\u2019s when Cathleen Beltz, then assistant inspector general, told the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission<\/a> that she investigated a tip about overcrowding within the facility.<\/p>\n She said she discovered that on one day in August, there were 22 \u201cfront bench\u201d patients \u2014 people who come in with psychiatric distress or drug or alcohol intoxication or withdrawal \u2014 who had been tethered with handcuffs and chains for nearly 24 hours while waiting for a bed.<\/p>\n In fall of 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court<\/a> to order immediate improvements to what it called \u201cabysmal\u201d conditions at the IRC.<\/p>\n An altered photo from an ACLU court filing shows incarcerated people sleeping upright in chairs or on the floor at the Inmate Reception Center in downtown L.A. <\/p>\n (<\/p>\n American Civil Liberties Union<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n Attorneys with the ACLU who visited the facility alleged they observed \u201cshocking conditions\u201d back then, including people with serious mental illness chained to chairs for days at a time, people defecating in trash cans and urinating on the floor as well as failures to provide people with adequate healthcare.<\/p>\n How the county addressed the issues<\/p>\n Carter said someone touring the IRC today would see a very different scene.<\/p>\n She said that although there have been some setbacks, the facility is cleaner and people are not languishing there for nearly as long.<\/p>\n Carter pointed to the development of a \u201cShared Intake Management System\u201d that helps keep custody staff, nursing and mental health professionals on the same page.<\/p>\n Other improvements leading to the better conditions include:<\/p>\n The county said it has also \u201cexpanded the network of community treatment beds for those who can be safely released from jail and treated in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n Led by the county\u2019s Office of Diversion and Reentry, officials said the county added a total of 168 treatment beds over the past two fiscal years.<\/p>\n Melissa Camacho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California who regularly monitors the jails, said the reduction in population in part due to the efforts of ODR played a major role in the improved conditions and wait times.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s really when we saw things turn around in the IRC and people not languishing in there because they were able to be processed quickly enough with the amount of mental health and medical staff that were there. And they simply had a place to go after the IRC,\u201d Camacho said.<\/p>\n Concerns about rising jail population<\/p>\n But with the jail population on the rise again, Camacho and Carter are concerned that the improvements at the IRC will hold. <\/p>\n They both pointed to the implementation of Proposition 36 as one factor in rising population numbers.<\/p>\n Proposition 36 increased criminal penalties for certain drug and theft crimes, including allowing felony charges for theft crimes under $950. It was a response to an increase in petty theft, shoplifting and smash-and-grab robberies across California.<\/p>\n In May, LAist reported that<\/a> the overall jail population had increased nearly 4% since late last year, in part because of more arrests related to the proposition that voters approved last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMany in the county including the Sheriff\u2019s Department are tracking individuals in the jails who have been arrested on a Prop. 36-related charge. That number has steadily climbed ever since the law went into effect,\u201d Carter said this week.<\/p>\n Though Camacho said she was also concerned the IRC could see a real setback if the jail population rises too much, she noted that conditions there were \u201cnight and day to what they were … in 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n Camacho said this should show the county that change is possible, even within a jail system that has been plagued by serious issues.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like they should take what they learned at the IRC and be able to apply those lessons elsewhere. Don\u2019t wait for the court to require you to do so,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles County officials are reporting significant improvements in wait times and conditions at a county jail facility…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":171706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-171705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115083817068797139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/scpr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/0b7f72b\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/519x301+0+0\/resize\/519x301!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fscpr-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F3a%2F15%2F28fa6f254473a8f17979a6d5be11%2Firc.png\")
<\/p>\n\n