Jails to Reopen Closed Areas So Inmates Won’t Have to Sleep on the Floor
Responding to a demand from the American Civil Liberties Union, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials say that in an effort to eliminate the practice of inmates sleeping on jail floors, they hope to reopen living areas that had been closed to save money.
In December, the county Board of Supervisors allocated an extra $9.1 million this year, and up to $24.4 million by 2007, to make more jail beds available to reduce the number of inmates released early.
More than 160,000 people have been let go early since Sheriff Lee Baca began closing jail sections in 2002, contending that budget woes had given him no other option to save money.
The department is expected to make use of an extra 1,160 beds by May.
In a letter to Baca last week, ACLU officials criticized the practice of having inmates sleep on the floor as dangerous and contributing to public health problems in the jails, including the spread of a virulent staph infection.
“Eradicating the floor-sleeper epidemic will remove persons in custody from direct exposure to leaky toilets, unclean floors and overcrowded cells,” wrote Ricardo Garcia and Jody Kent, who monitor criminal justice issues for the ACLU of Southern California.
About 640 inmates are forced to sleep on mattresses on cell or dormitory floors each day in the county’s seven jail facilities, said ACLU officials, who monitor the jails under a federal court order.
“As soon as we open up, we’ll have them off the floor,” said Sheriff’s Chief Chuck Jackson, who heads the department’s Correctional Services Division. But he cautioned that with arrests continuing to climb, the jails are unlikely to end the practice entirely.
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