ACLU: Mentally ill suffer abuse in L.A. County jails [UPDATED]

Updated, 9:40 a.m.: At a news conference this morning outside the L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting, ACLU general counsel Melinda Bird said: "We are urging the Board of Supervisors to address the conditions in Men's Central Jail because the conditions are medieval and drive men mad. Even the sheriff agrees that the only way to fix Men's Central Jail is to close it."

Original post:

Civil rights activists today called for the L.A. County Board of Supervisors and sheriff to close the Men’s Central Jail, where they say nightmarish conditions and overcrowding have exacerbated the symptoms of thousands of inmates suffering serious mental illness.

American Civil Liberties Union leaders made the call as they released a report by an expert on mental health in jails that paints the aging Men’s Central Jail in downtown L.A. as a massively overcrowded center where the mentally ill are abused, kept in their cells for much, if not all, of the day, and instead of being treated are subject to discipline.

They say the money from the closure would be better spent on mental health programs that could reduce the influx of inmates. The report by Dr. Terry Kupers, produced for the ACLU of Southern California, comes after an inmate hung himself last month in disciplinary housing inside the Men’s Central Jail.

Such is the level of problems that Kupers, a nationally known prison expert, reports that while both the U.S. Department of Justice and ACLU monitor the county jail system, a court-appointed master or monitor is needed to check on the mental health services across the county jails.

Sheriff Lee Baca, whose department operates the L.A. County jails, has long said the system is the largest mental health institution in the country.

The push by the ACLU, which has been a constant critic of jailhouse conditions and represents inmates in several lawsuits, comes as Baca is considering how to close a budget shortfall. In February, as the county’s budget projections worsened, Baca warned that he might have to release some inmates and close the Men’s Central Jail if he could not find alternatives.

Built in 1963, the jail costs about $50 million a year to operate and houses about 6,700 of the 18,000 inmates in the county jail system. The Men’s Central Jail, with some of the most dangerous inmates in the country, is known for outbreaks of violence, including slayings committed by inmates.

Despite the construction of the neighboring Twin Towers jail to help handle inmates with mental health issues, Kupers’ report found inmates with mental illness are still housed at Men’s Central and their disorders often overlooked.

He describes it as a dark and dank jail with crowded rows of mostly windowless cells, where rehabilitation programs are scarce or nonexistent and treatment is limited to medication. Those suffering from mental illness are often those most abused by fellow inmates, he says. The jailhouse rapist, he says, “selects a prisoner with significant mental illness, a loner who would likely have friends who might not retaliate.” (Note: An earlier version of this post left out the word "not" before "retaliate.")

Kupers says he was “stunned by the degree of overcrowding” at Men’s Central Jail when he visited last year and that calculations performed for his report found the institution fell far short of the space standard set by the American Correctional Assn., which is 35 square feet of unencumbered space per inmate.

He says the jail was so overcrowded that in many instances deputies simply could not see all the inmate areas because so many people were crammed into some spaces. He acknowledges that since his visit improvements have been made to reduce overcrowding, but for the most part men remain in their cells 24 hours a day, eat their meals there and don’t have access to mental health programs.

Lighting, he notes, was particularly bad.

“There is a double problem, the fixtures do not provide sufficient light for reading, and then lights are left on all night, interfering with sleep,” he writes.

Inmates' mental health suffers in this environment as they desperately crave interaction with the natural world in a windowless environment, where the older architecture exacerbates the noise, Kupers writes. Such are the conditions, Kupers says, that the staff has become “increasingly insensitive to prisoner concerns” as “excessive force and other abuses become more frequent occurrences.”

Many of those finding their way to L.A. County jails until the 1970s would have been treated in state psychiatric hospitals. The state changed its approach and opted to try to treat the mentally ill in the community. However, shortcomings led in many cases to no treatment at all, and the mentally ill often ended up in jail for nuisance offenses.

The sheer volume of inmates, Kupers says -- about 13,000 a month -- makes it impossible to screen for mental illness in all inmates. Kupers, a psychiatrist, alleges there is a pattern of failure to diagnose such illness and that jail officials inappropriately downgrade prisoners’ mental health disorders because there is not enough space in mental health areas of county jails. He cited incidences in which inmates with documented histories of mental hospital treatment for schizophrenia were downgraded to a disorder not worthy of mental health treatment.

Mentally ill inmates often end up in a segregated unit, where the shouting and crying are worse than in the general population unit, and pepper spray sometimes wafts into their cells from nearby incidents.

Kupers recommends the jail population across the system be reduced immediately. Mentally ill inmates, he says, need mental health housing, not segregation and punishment.

-- Richard Winton

From Times archives

In jail and in danger (December 17, 2006)

Healthcare suffers at L.A. jails (Dec. 24, 2006)

Photo gallery

Comments

[current jail employee]

The seriously mentally ill inmates in the Los Angeles County Jail are not housed in the Men's Central Jail. They are housed across the street, at Twin Towers Correctional Facility, where they receive psychiatric medication, counseling from psychologists and social workers, group therapy, and other appropriate interventions.

[Amy]

I've observed conditions at MCJ, which resembles an old prison movie, and I shudder to think how much worse it was before the ACLU successfully litigated a class action challenging conditions such as over-crowding, lack of access to medical care, etc.

Most inmates spend 23-24 hours per day in their crowded, windowless cells, eating mere feet from the toilet, and get only three hours per week outside (with some inmates spending those three hours locked in an outdoor cage not much larger than their body). Visitation time is set up in such a way as to render it impossible for many families. You can actually feel the weight of oppression and despair.

These conditions would be inhumane for convicted felons, but it's even worse in a jail, where inmates are either awaiting trial (meaning they are innocent unless/until proven guilty) or serving up to a year for a misdemeanor.

[Carl Wiley]

Okay. And I assume they have a plan to fix the jail overcrowding situation right? It is so easy to Monday Morning Quarterback this situation. Do they have a real solution? You can close the jail, but where will you put the other inmates?

Author
The Ring of Knowledge

[Joseph K]

I spent seven months in that medieval sewer. To call them hellish doesn't even come close. When thrown in, I had an eye condition. Because the jail refused to treat them despite three court orders and several ACLU complaints, I was blind upon release. Further, I lost 70 pounds. Although constantly sick, I was refused treatment numerous times. When released, I was diagnosed with cancer. It also took me 180 days to receive diabetes medication, again despite court orders and ACLU complaints. This hellhole operates above the law and does not give a damn about any legal or judicial interference.

[Tez]

Maybe they shouldn't of broken the law!

[Joey]

When has going to jail suppose to be the Holiday Inn Express. These people committed a crime and now they do the time. I do not care how bad they have it. What is keeping people out of jail unless they don't to go back into it. I do not care if they mentally ill. That is a doctor's decision to move them into a place where they can have their needs met, but either way, people who committ crimes should not be treated with privilleges that people who do not commit crimes. I don't even like them having TV. We should bring back the chain-gang and have them work while "we the taxpayers" are putting up their costs. ACLU....what a joke!

[jesse Trejo]

I have spent time in the County Jail and before the ACLU started look into the County Jail we use to sleep on the floor. Where rats and bugs would walk over you. Yes things have change but is still very over crowed. Where even the strongest mind can feel the pressure, and Yes they do put mentally ill people in Mens Central. They also do not give us 3hrs a week outside made 1hr a week if that. And it take 24-48hrs just to get a bed where yuou have to sleep on the floor in holding cells.

[boo boo]

A nation is judged by how it treats it's prisoners!
Does this mean we are going back to the dark ages?

Why isn't the mayor of Los Angeles held responsible for such horrible jail conditions in the city that he runs?

You can end up in jail VERY easily in Los Angeles.

[Andrew]

Props to the ACLU for standing up for the rights of prisoners in county jails. This is a system that, in its current state, we as an enlightened society should be appalled by.

From firsthand experience, I can report that conditions in county jails are barbaric and shockingly inhumane. The ACLU's argument that the conditions in jails can exacerbate mental illness is probably too conservative; I submit that the conditions in some jails can seriously disturb even the most grounded individual. I have seen healthy, productive adults arrested for benign offenses such as being drunk in public and been treated so poorly that they left jail somewhat unstable after less than 24 hours (unsure of how much of this instability came from the treatment or the realization that human beings are treated this way in this country).

Combine an infrastructure designed to break the human psyche, and jailers themselves who tend to be unnecessarily abusive, and you have a recipe for problems. Just one example of how the two work together: in the aforementioned windowless cells, the lights were accurately reported in the article as being left on 24 hours a day. The jailers have a habit of taking advantage of this disorienting practice by actively refusing to tell prisoners the time. What results is a complete dissociation from nature and the outside world that is deeply disturbing. A prisoner will have literally no idea what time it is, whether it's day or night, or how many hours or days have passed.

While I do not condone human rights abuses in any case, Amy's comment that many inmates in jails are awaiting trial--not even convicted of a single offense--cannot be overstated. To treat innocent citizens as if they were convicted criminals is unacceptable. LA is not the third world.

[Mikey]

Newsflash- Jails are built to segregate and punish.

[Pops]

The politicians can no longer complain that they are underpaid with not enough benefits to do their job correctly.
It is their responsibility to correct inhumane treatment in jails.
The irony is that Bankers and Brokers who ruined the economy are getting millions of dollars in bonuses from a government bailout with taxes collected from people in Los Angeles while people with mental problems in Los Angeles are put in jail and have to fend for themselves.

[kerry livermore]

Can we not make things easier and more relaxing for the prisoners so that their mental health is protected. In the UK they have playstations, computers, mobile phones, Gyms, libraries, and drugs are easily available. Maybe the guards could birng them breakfast in bed to save their weary feet.

[LA]

Why would anyone care? Most of the people in jail are black and latino... if this country doesn't care about about giving us a proper education and proper health care... those of us who ARE NOT "convicts"... why would anyone care about the ones who SUPPOSEDLY committed a crime?

RACIST AMERICA! Shame on you!

[Bob A. Bowie]

Many of these "mentall ill" persons that are clogging up the system are charged just so that police can clear caseloads. Police in this city often prey on the mentally ill, poor or disposessed because they can't post bail and mount a legal defense. I don't see how the cause of public safety is advanced by jailing innocent people.

[JPL]

This is rich. The ACLU, by defending the' rights' of the mentally ill to refuse treatment, has contributed greatly to the number of homeless and to the prison system becoming the country's primary mental health provider.

According to 'The Insanity Offense: How America's Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens' by E. Torrey Fuller, the dismantling of America's mental health care system over the past 60 years has been the work of conservatives who have cut mental health budgets to the quick and civil rights advocates who have helped unleash thousands of people who should be medicated or institutionalized against their will.

[William, aka, Mohammed]

volley2.ind 68: ?>*:\ ...//2009:04:14:04:43:75*W:46*F+/-?
#41 of 44: William Hale (hinging0) Tue 14 Apr 2009 (02:54 PM)

Such is the level of problems that Kupers, a nationally known prison
expert, reports that while both the U.S. Department of Justice and ACLU
monitor the county jail system, a court-appointed master or monitor is
needed to check on the mental health services across the county jails.

==============NH:
The only thing 'one of' is enough of is 'God' [exterior sound] [siren
meanders]. So,"Get a second, independent opinion," Set up a rotating
panel with a permanent archive,, and public access to the statistical
information and use software to substitute screen names and addresses
for all personal files, so the entire system is transparent and open to
public inspection. [exterior sound]
================NH//

[uncle_vito]

I am glad the prisoners are mentally tortured in jail. That is the way jail should be. it should not be a country club.

Vito

[stephanie]

Joey, that is an ignorant statement. Most of the people that have mental illness are stigmatized (way to keep that one going, Joey) and are disabled (meaning they have no income). That means they have no money for a lawyer and are given overowkred and exhausted public defenders. Because of people like you, Joey, the mentally ill are shuffled back and forth. Did you know that one of our clients was thrown in jail and wasn't given their psych meds or epilepsy medicine? This person had two seizures in jail. also, they changed his meds for him. What about clients that are mentally ill and have the mental capacity of a 10 year old? They reoffend over and over. Do not judge these people. Until you experience the voices, burdens and criticisms of people like you.....keep your mouth shut.

[nmoore6676]

The mentally ill are in the ACLU. This is a communist organization dedicated to the ultimate destruction of America. If J. Edgar Hoover were still alive they wouldn't be so fat and sassy.

[Bob Johnson]

I guess the ACLU took some time off from their now full time jobs as Al Qaeda's legal counsel to plead the case for the garbage clogging up our prison system.

[Observer]

Legalize Pot already

[PNW Trojan]

One of Reagan's GREAT GIFTS; he opened all the Looney Bins and now, these mentally unstable ones can prey upon everyone. I'd love to see daily executions of predatory vermin, but mentally handicapped, criminally insane DO NOT MEET MY CRITERIA - they need help, as in a hospital, where they are kept secure. Usually the freaks at the ACLU want to put EVERY maggot up in a Four Seasons with room service and a personal valet, but in this case - GULP - I HAVE to agree with them. (Is Armageddon just around the corner???)

[UNJUST LAWS AND SENTENCING]

They are not housed across the street at Twin Towers. They did a major move from some of the inmates from Twin TOwers to get moved across to Mens Central and from WAYSIDE to MEns Central. They have been cramming prisoners in there more and more with these unjust Laws and sentencing that does not even fit the crime. Then once they get in there and do their time they are never released as sentenced. People who just don't care better think again because you may just end up here. Police officers, D.A.'s all lie on paper. The truth is never told. Reports are reported the way they want it to be reported. THEY ARE JUST A LEGAL GANG!!! People have lost respect for the LAW because they are worse than the criminals..... THEY LIE AND DON"T TELL THE TRUTH. EVERYONE HAS A PAST EVEN THEM BUT IF YOU WERE CONVICTED OF SOMETHING IN YOUR PAST THEY DON"T BELIEVE THAT GOD CAN CHANGE YOU... REMEMBER JUST AS YOU JUDGE YOU YOURSELF WILL BE JUDGED.. FORGET IF YOUR SICK THEY CLAIM THEY CANT HELP YOU>>>> GOD FORGIVE THIS LEGAL SYSTEM AND HAVE MERCY ON THEM>>>>

[Susan1union1]

The families of United for No Injustice, Oppression or Neglect (UNION) have been alerting the press and the media about similar torture taking place in prisons. Not just once, but on a daily basis for eleven years. This kind of treatment returns everyone to their communities much sicker than before incarceration. No leading criminologist or sociologist believes that prisons and jails are doing one thing except increasing crime. The politicians want to use your tax money to punish the sick. The three mental hospitals we have in California are grossly overcrowded and since Reagan pulled all the funding in the 70's, they have been cast to the streets. Before you get too high on your own horse, keep in mind that more than 11% of state prisoners are former veterans who became mentally ill during the wars. At least 30% of the soldiers are coming back from the Middle East with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and they will have it forever. A great deal could be done to prevent mental illness and to separate those who have it in prisons and jails. But with the politicians blustering "tough-on-crime" and an uninformed public, it is difficult to make any progress in this area. Prisons are practices from the dark ages and there are many better alternatives.

[Nora Weber]

The overcrowding problem is everywhere in California, not just the jails. The California prison system is completely beyond repair. They should be forced to release the very sick into long term care facilities and send them home for their relatives to take care of.

I have been trying to get my son released for years. He is slowly dying from out of control diabetes and the State will not lift a finger to release him.

They are so over crowded their lack of care is nothing short of torture.

When my son was sent to an outside hospital, his under garmets were so dirty, the hospital staff just cut them off and threw them in the trash.

It is hard to imagine we live in the United States when you see prisons ran like the ones in California. Imagine it is called Rehabilitation.

[melissa kmoore]

my fiance was moved from twin towers to mens central jail because he reported a sherif putting hands on him. he is now getting denied some of is meds the ones he needs most. weve gotten a court order for him to go back to twin towers but they have totally ignored it. isnt there anything we can do to help our loved ones get the medicine they need?

[Reed Gauge]

Lots of accurate comments are posted with regard to the third world conditions at LA's Men's Central Jail. Particularly disturbing is the mental torture imposed upon those with medically disabling conditions. This population will only increase as many of the Iraqi/Afghan veterans come stumbling home. However, no picture is herein painted with regard to Women's jail conditions, which are even worse for those with mental disabilities. Overcrowding in all the areas' neuro/psyche wards often lead to behavioral disorders being treated by untrained LAPD and LASD sworn officers. My femaile client was not only refused treatment and even an LAPD MEU indicated 72-hour hold at Cedars/Sinai and UCLA Neuro - although she had a recent 10 day hospitalization in the bedlam of Thalbergs wings at Cedars following a suicide attempt - but she was released with no support to the streets and was shortly arrested at her apartment for trying to get in without any keys or ID. To add insult to injury she was carted all over the city until a female detention space was found in Watts, and then kicked loose from Central Arraignment to walk home to the west side after a long week-end without her ID or jewelry held by the LASD. Filing a lost property report was a lost cause, since the County is so broke they cannot admit liability, thus further encouraging the long known practice of having prisoner's valuables "grow legs." Perhaps, the ACLU can find enough meat in this case to prevent this now jobless and thus bankrupt young woman from just becoming another permanent piece of grist for California's version of one big Gitmo or Abu Ghirab at "Devil's Playa del Vista Malo." California: The former home to the education system which got the US to the moon, but now a rancid Prop-13 backwater, book-ended by the punitive Reagan to Scwartznegger eras of the US entree into the Dark Ages. R.G., PhD/LLB.