L.A. County supervisors vote to move forward on $2-billion jail plan

Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to move forward with a $2-billion plan to replace the deteriorating downtown Men’s Central Jail with a new facility geared toward inmates with mental health and substance abuse issues and to create a new women’s jail.

They also voted to undertake an extensive study into how the county could divert more mentally ill offenders from the jail system.

The five supervisors voted 3 to 2 to begin designing and building a new two-towered structure next to the old Men’s Central Jail and setting up a new women’s jail at the vacant Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster, at an estimated construction cost of $1.98 billion over the next 10 years.

Supervisors Gloria Molina, Michael Antonovich and Don Knabe voted in favor of the plan, with Zev Yaroslavsky voting no and Mark Ridley-Thomas abstaining.

Yaroslavsky expressed concerns about the price tag.

“All of us have been around long enough to know that if you’re telling us it’s $2 billion today, it’s not going to go down -- it’s only going to go up,” he said.

Ridley-Thomas said modernizing the jail system “is nothing short of a mandate for both moral and legal reasons” but that he did not think there had been enough study of diversion options.

But other county officials argued that the federal government would intervene -- as it has in the state prison system -- if the county does not act quickly to improve conditions for mentally ill inmates.

All five supervisors voted to undertake an analysis of diversion programs for mentally ill offenders in the county and the availability of beds in a non-jail setting to support the population.

Audience members, many of whom urged the board to hold off on jail construction and focus on diversion, clapped at the unanimous vote.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey is heading up a task force that has already begun looking at the issue. Advocates called for the board to wait until that group’s work is done before voting on a jail plan. Lacey did not take a stance on the timing issue but told the board she is optimistic that about 1,000 of the county’s approximately 3,000 mentally ill inmates could be diverted, reducing jail crowding and costs.

“The use of jails as a surrogate mental health ward has resulted in extremely high costs,” she said. “The current system is, simply put, unjust.”

The board will next award a contract for the design work and begin the process of an environmental study.