Prisoner Abuse Scandal in L.A. County Jails-- Guest Post From Sheriff Candidate Lou Vince

In 2011, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a report in Federal Court giving L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca’s department a scathing review for his deputies’ treatment of prisoners. A New York Times article that year summed up the report:

One inmate said he was forced to walk down a hallway naked after sheriff’s deputies accused him of stealing a piece of mail. They taunted him in Spanish, calling him a derogatory name for homosexuals.

Another former inmate said that after he protested that guards were harassing a mentally ill prisoner, the same deputies took him into another room, slammed his head into a wall and repeatedly punched him in the chest.

And a chaplain said he saw deputies punching an inmate until he collapsed to the ground. They then began kicking the apparently unconscious man’s head and body...

“This situation, the length of time it has been going on, the volume of complaints and the egregious nature are much, much worse than anything I’ve ever seen,” said Tom Parker, a retired F.B.I. official who led the agency’s Los Angeles office for years and oversaw investigations into the Rodney King beating and charges of corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. “They are abusing inmates with impunity, and the worst part is that they think they can get away with it.”

But perhaps most troubling was the Sheriff’s denial of the problem. He “repeatedly dismissed any suggestion of a systemic problem in the jails, saying that all allegations of abuse are investigated and that most are unfounded.”

Last year, the County-appointed Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence cited Baca’s lack of leadership as a key reason why the abuse was happening.

Now the candidate challenging Baca in the 2014 race for Sheriff, LAPD Supervisor Lou Vince, who we first met last month, tells us his thoughts about the abuse problem and what he will do to solve it in his second DWT guest post.

If you agree with Lou’s plans for reforming the LA jails, be sure to visit his website-– LouVince.com. Don’t forget, campaigns aren’t free, and Lou will need your support to make those reforms he talks about below. You can make a contribution to his campaign by clicking here.

The L.A. County Jail System: "The Largest Psychiatric Hospital In The Country" 
-by Lou Vince

The episodes of prisoner abuse at the L.A. County jails are wholly unacceptable. Someone who has been arrested for or convicted of a crime can be reasonably expected to serve time as part of his or her debt to society. But it is not reasonable to expect them to face guards who callously beat them.

Marty Horn, the former Commissioner of New York City Department of Corrections and a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in his testimony to the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence (CCJV), told the commissioners that “Sheriff Lee Baca inevitably pays more attention to street patrols that are more visible to the public than to what happens in his jails.”

Patrols are important, but the jails are one of the Sheriff’s primary responsibilities, and in a jail system that has been suspect of problems for over a decade, it is unthinkable that the Sheriff could be so dismissive of this part of his job.

The good news is that there are solutions to the problems in the jails, and after years of studies and reports about the problems, it is time to implement the solutions.

One of the biggest problems is overcrowding in the jails. High density of inmates in the County facilities puts deputies on edge. Due to a number of factors, the jails are operating beyond a reasonable capacity, and they can’t do it indefinitely.

I will discuss the challenges of jail overcrowding further in a future guest post, but for now, I will say this: the challenges are not insurmountable. With “virtual incarceration” methods, new data collection initiatives, and conditional, post-conviction release bonds for non-violent offenders, we can sharply reduce the County jail population.

Another major problem in the County jails is the mental deterioration of prisoners with mental illnesses who are receiving little to no services while incarcerated. This problem is directly linked to violence in the jails.

The Los Angeles County jail system has been described by many experts and commentators as the largest psychiatric hospital in the country. The popular social movement of “De-institutionalization” of some years ago has turned into what some mental health experts now term “trans-institutionalization” because our society has transferred the population that once resided in psychiatric hospitals and mental institutions to our jails and prisons. 64% of jail inmates suffer from a significant mental health problem.

According to the opinions of Dr. Terry A. Kupers in a 2008 ACLU report, few inmates in the L.A. County jails were receiving mental health treatment and about 350 per 2,000 inmates were receiving only medications while being subjected to severe overcrowding or isolation but no mental health programming.

Additionally, in tours of Men’s Central Jail, Twin Towers, and the Inmate Reception Center he encountered a significant number of inmates who were either never diagnosed or were discharged from the caseload and transferred from mental health housing, administrative segregation, or disciplinary housing into the general population.

The connection between jail violence and mental illness should be obviously clear. Add jail overcrowding and you have a recipe for increased rates of violence, psychiatric breakdown, suicide, a loss of impulse control, temper flares, and increased noncompliance with rules and regulations.

Also of great concern was the fact that it was found that these mentally-ill inmates were rarely seen by psychiatrists and were being managed by Deputy Sheriffs who had no training in handling psychiatric patients. Deputies react to behaviors exhibited by the mentally ill. They become gruff, which is interpreted by the inmates as being “disrespected” and they, in turn, become angry. Their anger can and does result in being punished and so the anger escalates. Staff reacts and so the cycle continues.

As Sheriff, I would lobby the County Supervisors to mandate the Department of Mental Health to evaluate the need for substance abuse and mental health services among pre-trial and sentenced offenders, in both the incarcerated and community-supervised population, and develop a plan to fund and provide such treatment and services both in the correctional facilities and the community.

Finally, there is the problem of those deputies guilty of prisoner abuse. The old saying that it only takes “one bad apple” to ruin the bushel comes to mind. While prisoner abuse is not widespread among the deputies in the jails, it is well known that there are “cliques” of deputies who proudly engage in unprofessional behavior. There are also reports of deputies being instructed to abuse inmates by their superiors.

This behavior is unacceptable and has been accepted by the Sheriff for too long. I would make it a top priority to weed out those deputies who are guilty of conduct unbecoming of a law enforcement officer. Within the limits of the contract with the deputies’ union, I would reassign, reprimand, or even dismiss deputies who have violated the public’s trust.

Ultimately, the tasks of solving the problems in the County jails require leadership. Baca was elected in 1998 and, by the next election, will have had 16 years to spitball, plan, lead, guide, direct, train, motivate and implement any number of reforms, proposals and ideas. 16 years to bring in academics and subject matter experts. 16 years to try something “outside the box” or drill down and make existing processes more efficient.

Instead, while there has been some interest in reform only lately, it has only been stimulated by community outcry and the media shining the light on the issues that plague the County jails, and the LASD for that matter. While Baca has been the head of the jail system for 16 years, he has essentially been asleep at the wheel (something he more or less admitted during the CCJV hearings).

Leadership is action, not just a position or title. I will not tolerate inhumane or brutal treatment of inmates in my care and custody. As Sheriff, I will rely upon my integrity, experience, and desire for positive action to build a Sheriff’s Department the citizens can be proud of again.