Opinion: New York: a great place to go to jail
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Before The Times or any other local newspaper runs another story comparing public services in L.A. to those in New York, let’s just stipulate something: New York always spends more. When LAPD Chief William Bratton complains that he doesn’t have enough officers, he likes to point out how far the department lags behind New York (it has one officer per 207 residents, compared with one for every 411 residents in Los Angeles). New York also spends roughly twice as much on services for the homeless. And in media reports on L.A. County’s troubled jail system, it has become standard practice to mention that New York has dramatically more jail guards overseeing a smaller inmate population than L.A.’s.
An otherwise excellent report on jail killings in Sunday’s Times by Stuart Pfeifer and Robin Fields repeated that familiar theme, pointing out that 3,300 uniformed deputies in L.A. County must watch over about 18,000 inmates, while in New York there are three times as many guards overseeing 5,000 fewer prisoners. This is frequently offered by the Sheriff’s Department as an excuse for the oversight problems that may have contributed to the 14 jail homicides in L.A. County since 2000. Certainly, the comparison makes L.A. jails look shockingly underfunded -- unless you look at any other big city besides New York.
L.A. County spends roughly $27,800 annually per inmate, compared to $61,000 in New York. Yet L.A. still spends more than the next three biggest cities in the United States. Philadelphia spends $23,700 per inmate, Chicago’s Cook County spends $20,000 and Houston’s Harris County spends only $15,800. Harris County happens to be the nation’s death-penalty capital, and killing the inmates off does save on room and board. Still, it’s clear that L.A. is only a laggard on jail spending when compared to New York.
Why does that city spend so much? Probably because it has more to spend, given sky-high property and sales taxes. But while Sheriff Lee Baca would like people to believe that an ongoing crisis in the local jails is the result of underspending on his department, that isn’t necessarily the case. A bigger problem is the shortage of people who want to be sheriff’s deputies, creating a recruiting shortfall that makes it hard to fill open slots. It’s also more than possible that training and oversight of the deputies who serve as jail guards leave a lot to be desired, while computer systems and jail facilities are badly outdated.
What’s certain is that L.A. is never going to match New York when it comes to spending on law enforcement and other services, and unless Angelenos want to pay much higher taxes, that isn’t going to change. So comparisons on such things aren’t really very valuable.