Holes in our jails

JAIL ISN’T SUPPOSED TO BE A VACATION, as even Martha Stewart would testify. It also isn’t supposed to be a death sentence.

Jails, especially in a city the size of Los Angeles, are full of dangerous people. The racial and ethnic enmities that plague Los Angeles jails (and all of California’s large prisons) make the job of keeping inmates safe from one another harder. Even given these difficulties, the eight inmate slayings over the last two years in Los Angeles County’s downtown jail are shocking. Sheriff Lee Baca keeps looking for ways to plug lapses that led to each individual killing (to say nothing of a growing number of escapes), but new holes keep appearing.

The latest victim was apparently stomped to death for cutting into a lunch line. He compounded the offense by being of the wrong color. It was an elementary-school fight in every way except the consequence. No deputies were in the holding room, which contained 30 inmates, most of whom watched the killing. Deputies couldn’t see in because windows were boarded over.

The downtown Men’s Central Jail is itself part of the reason for the continued danger. Built in 1963, it is the opposite of state of the art. Cells are in rows, so deputies can’t see into a cell unless they’re in front of it. A plan to track inmates with electronic devices (devised after the savage 2004 stalking slaying of an informant by the killer he fingered) is stalled by its estimated annual cost of $30 million to $40 million, according to jail officials.

A promise to separate the most violent inmates from the general population has foundered on the problem of beds: If, say, 1,000 are set aside for ultra-violent inmates, what if only 700 are in residence at a particular time?

The ultimate solution is to tear down and rebuild the dangerous, outdated central jail, but that is a $400-million proposition. The department needs more deputies and has the funding to hire them, but the process has been slow. Both morale and efficiency might be increased by hiring more civilian guards because new deputies are not eager to work in the jails before they get to be patrol officers.

The county’s Office of Independent Review, which monitors the Sheriff’s Department, sees the glass as half-empty and half-full. Its latest report offers praise for increased monitoring in the jails, but it criticizes the department for too little progress in separating inmates by their propensity for violence. Such segregation, and the presence of a camera or deputies in the lunchroom, could well have prevented the latest death. Meals, say the monitors, are important to inmates and a known source of trouble.

Just because the rule book doesn’t require guards in a given situation doesn’t mean they’re unnecessary. What such incidents too often come down to is lack of common sense as much as lack of resources.