Readers React: Don’t build a new county jail until reforms are in place first

To the editor: Bad jails will get less bad, less crowded and safer if Los Angeles County starts using long-standing strategies to reduce the inmate population while it develops experience with the reductions and diversions being newly considered. Then it will know what facilities we need. (“Men’s Central Jail should be demolished. But what should replace it?,” editorial, Jan. 4)

Building a replacement for Men’s Central Jail now using plans made in 2013 without first implementing reforms is perpetuating, not reversing, what the editorial correctly identifies as a “jail-first approach.”

Decades of experience have shown that building before implementing reforms leads to more incarceration and basically unchanged rates of crime. Services decline because of budget crunches made worse by annual construction bond payments. The four L.A. County supervisors who were state legislators ought to know that well.

This time, let’s do first things first and implement reforms before new jail construction.

Joseph Maizlish, Los Angeles

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