Miles to go for L.A. justice

Over the last few decades, it's been easy to blame the leadership of the Los Angeles Police Department, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's office for the catastrophic failures of L.A.'s criminal justice system. These failures, as most Angelenos know, have led to a dangerously overcrowded, racially explosive county jail system; a violent gang problem that continues unabated after 10,000 deaths over 25 years, and generation after generation of young black and brown men ceaselessly shuttled off to state prisons at a rate of more than 22,000 a year -- as many as 70% of whom, once released, will recycle back within three years.

By Joe Domanick

July 6, 2008