Election’s tough-on-crime message could spell trouble for LA County’s struggling jails, juvenile halls

California’s unmistakable tough-on-crime message in this month’s election could set back efforts to reform Los Angeles County’s failing jails and juvenile halls by years if inmate populations spike, advocates and policymakers say.

The county’s plans to improve conditions at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, its largest juvenile facility, and to close Men’s Central Jail, its largest jail, are critically dependent on reducing the number of inmates and detainees below current levels. But a clearly frustrated electorate seemingly turned its back on criminal justice reform on Nov. 5, passing Proposition 36 to increase penalties for property theft and drug offenses and ousting progressive L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón.

Criminal justice reformers fear what comes next.

“I think what we’re looking at is a potentially very, very bad situation,” said Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “Anyone who goes into the jails nowadays, particularly Men’s Central Jail, would be appalled at the conditions. The more crowded the jail is, the more of every other problem you have.”

The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates Proposition 36, which was approved by nearly 70% of state voters, could add thousands of inmates to state prisons as well as county jails, while simultaneously slowing case resolution and cutting the available funds for mental health, drug treatment and victim services by “the low tens of millions of dollars annually.”

The Prison Policy Initiative, an advocacy group focused on criminal justice reform, anticipated an even more dire increase in a report ahead of the election that estimated incarcerated populations in California could increase by as much as 35% by 2029 under the new law.

The District Attorney’s Office has not conducted a review of pending cases to determine how many would be impacted by Prop. 36 and could not provide any statistics, according to a spokesperson.

New DA plans ‘hard middle approach’

In an interview with the Southern California News Group, Gascón’s successor, incoming District Attorney Nathan Hochman, also could not say whether an increase is likely as he does not yet have access to the full data needed to make such an assessment.

Still, speaking on his own election by nearly 20 percentage points, Hochman described himself as having a “hard middle approach” that rejects “the extremes of mass incarceration and decarceration.”

His pledge, he said, is to ensure that L.A. County’s jails and juvenile halls are safe, constitutional and rehabilitative. He sees his role, beyond prosecutions, as a “megaphone” advocating for the changes necessary to improve both systems, including the replacement of Men’s Central Jail, and against efforts to continue to “kick this can down the road.”

Paraphrasing a quote from Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hochman said: “You can judge the quality of a civilization by the quality of its jails and prisons.”

“Under that lens, Los Angeles County has failed,” he said. “I would do my best over the next four years to make sure that failure no longer continues.”

Deterring criminal conduct

Hochman isn’t looking to return to the type of criminal justice seen in the 1960s, he said. His target is 2014.

At the end of that year, voters approved Proposition 47, the referendum recategorizing certain levels of shoplifting and other offenses as misdemeanors. Proposition 36 repeals several of those changes.

“The number one goal I’m trying to achieve is not to fill the prisons to the breaking point, it is to deter the criminal conduct from occurring in the first place,” Hochman said. “The strong message is ‘don’t violate the law.’ I don’t bluff in any aspect of my life and I certainly don’t bluff when it comes to criminal justice as well.”

Incarceration rates plummeted from 2014 to 2024, while Part 1 crime rates — which include violent and property crimes — were less consistent. Offenses initially spiked, then trended down over several years to a low in 2020, before jumping back up post pandemic, according to the Sheriff’s Department’s crime stats dashboard.

The total number of offenses increased about 13% from 2014 to 2023, according to the dashboard.

By comparison, the average daily inmate population (ADIP) within Los Angeles County’s jails hovered around 18,681 in 2014, according to data from the Sheriff’s Department. Since then, ADIP has decreased by about 34% to 12,418 as of September.

Jail overcrowding

A return to those 2014 inmate numbers would be a “disaster,” said Eliasberg, the ACLU lawyer. He is familiar with the damage that overcrowding can cause.

Last year, the ACLU and Los Angeles County agreed to settle a lawsuit over inhumane conditions at the county jail’s Inmate Reception Center. There, they found inmates sleeping on cold floors, littered with trash and feces, in overcrowded cells. Individuals with mental health issues were sometimes chained to benches for hours without access to needed medications.

A population surge could make it more difficult for the Sheriff’s Department to continue to comply with the terms of that settlement agreement, Eliasberg said.

Next door, Men’s Central Jail, built in 1963, suffers from similarly unsafe and filthy conditions, with frequently broken plumbing and ventilation systems, all of which would be exacerbated by an increase in the population, Eliasberg said. As of Nov. 22, Men’s Central had 3,921 inmates, roughly 400 more than the facility’s rated capacity.

‘Ticking time bomb’

In August, the Los Angeles Times reported on a 2006 study that found a strong enough earthquake on the Puente Hills fault system could lead to a partial, or even a total, collapse of the weakened jail, potentially resulting in the deaths of inmates. Despite the warning nearly a decade ago, work on the estimated $464 million in upgrades needed to shore up the facility never began, according to The Times.

“It’s a ticking time bomb,” Eliasberg said of Men’s Central.

It would be difficult to find someone who doesn’t agree that Men’s Central is long past its expiration date. For the past five years, the county Board of Supervisors has agreed that closing Men’s Central Jail is critical, though how exactly that would happen and what would replace it, if anything, has been debated, weighed and reweighed. The Board voted 3-1 in October to publicly oppose Prop. 36 because it would result in a loss of funds earmarked by Prop. 47 and lead to increased incarceration rates.

At the Board of Supervisors’ July 30 meeting, Sheriff Robert Luna, a proponent for replacing Men’s Central with a facility based off “correctional care in the 21st century,” described the current state of Men’s Central as “horrible” and said it is not ready to handle potential legislative changes targeting repeat offenders.

“Today, we don’t have adequate facilities,” Luna said. The sheriff could not be reached for comment.

‘The world has changed around us’

Supervisor Holly Mitchell, during that same meeting, acknowledged the “pendulum” in California has swung back toward a tougher stance on crime since the board began envisioning the closure of Men’s Central.

“We keep saying when are you closing Men’s Central Jail,” she said. “I think there needs to be an ‘and’ what are we building, creating for this population that perhaps pretrial, diversion, community settings won’t match and recognizing that the world has changed around us.”

Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who voted against the board’s opposition to Prop. 36, said in an interview that it’s too early to tell what the impacts of the election might be. She described Hochman as someone who doesn’t want to lock people up and “throw away the key.”

“Nathan Hochman recognizes, as the D.A., our goal is not to incarcerate more, it is create a system of accountability, but also a system of redemption, for those who can and want to their their lives around, by providing them with the resources to do it,” Barger said.

She sees Prop. 36 as a wake-up call for the county and the state, as well a potential catalyst to get the Board of Supervisors to move forward with replacing Men’s Central Jail. The new facility she imagines would include mental health services and addiction services and would have more of a therapeutic setting, she said.

“We work best when we’re behind the 8-ball,” she said.

Supervisors Lindsey Horvath, Janice Hahn and Mitchell did not respond to requests for comment. Supervisor Hilda Solis, in a statement, acknowledged voters’ desire to strengthen “L.A. County’s public safety policies and laws” and said she looks forward to working with Hochman.

“The passage of Prop. 36 does have the potential to increase the number of individuals in our carceral system and I want to make sure we protect our residents while continuing to reduce our jail population through a care-first approach,” she stated. “I remain steadfast in my commitment to ensuring the improvement of our juvenile halls and jails. Our County Departments are diligently and collaboratively working to provide viable solutions, while also understanding the urgency with which we must work.”

Poor conditions at juvenile halls

Los Angeles County has been facing pressure to fix its juvenile halls for years. Last year, the Board of State and Community Corrections, the regulatory agency overseeing California’s juvenile halls, forced Los Angeles County to close its two largest juvenile halls due to the poor conditions within the facilities, and, in turn, the county scrambled to reopen Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, closed in 2019, to house the consolidated population from its shuttered predecessors.

The same problems that resulted in the closure of Central and Barry J. Nidorf juvenile halls almost immediately showed up at Los Padrinos after its reopening. Within months, the facility was out of compliance with state law as well. It was ordered to close earlier this year, but managed to narrowly avoid a shutdown by stabilizing Los Padrinos temporarily through a mandate reassigning more than 100 field probation officers to the facility.

It was short lived, however, and by October 2024 the facility was once again ordered to close due to its short staffing. Officials at the Los Angeles County Probation Department, unable to boost staffing numbers enough to meeting minimum ratios, have begun implementing measures to reduce Los Padrinos’ population to a more manageable level.

Keeping the population down will be critical for the future stability of Los Padrinos, if it manages to avoid an all-but-inevitable closure on Dec. 12. Even if it is granted a reprieve, the department will have nearly a dozen other deficiencies to cure, almost all of which relate back to its limited staffing.

All eyes on Hochman

Eduardo Mundo, a former probation supervisor and chair of the Probation Oversight Commission, said he believes Hochman’s administration will play the largest role in whether the numbers begin to tick back up again. The District Attorney’s Office is responsible for the severity of charges against juveniles, including the assessment of “strikes” and potential enhancements, such as those added to a case when an individual is believed to have gang ties.

Youth hit with enhancements or strikes tend to spend significantly longer in Los Padrinos, which houses nearly 300 youth referred to as “predisposition,” meaning their cases have yet to be adjudicated, Mundo said. Probation officials have said getting that number down to 250 or lower would make a difference.

Hochman plans to lift Gascón’s blanket policy banning enhancements, but how he uses that tool could make the difference. In an interview, Hochman said his office will conduct individualized assessments in each case and use enhancements only when “justified by the facts of the law.”

“We’re not going to file an enhancement for an enhancement’s sake,” Hochman said.

Mundo believes the number of incarcerated juveniles might actually drop if the District Attorney’s Office reviews juvenile cases fairly. Though Gascón prohibited enhancements, they were still used, and potentially overused, in juvenile cases in recent years, Mundo said.

“For me, I think if he is really sincere about being fair, then we should have a decline in the amount of kids being detained, and I’m hoping for that,” Mundo said. “If the D.A. is going to automatically put a strike on everybody because they can, then you’re going to see a larger and larger population of predisposition kids.”

If that happens, it’s unlikely Los Padrinos will be able to come out of its tailspin, he said.

A different perspective

Claire Simonich, associate director for the Vera Institute of Justice, an advocacy group focused on ending mass incarceration, said that while the election results make it clear voters are frustrated, she doesn’t see the support for Prop. 36 as an indication that voters want more people thrown in jail.

She differentiated the message not as “tough on crime,” but rather “serious on safety,” a difference between incarceration and providing programs that help people turn their lives around. “Serious on safety” means more funding for affordable housing and doubling down on diversion programs, job and mental health services, and addiction treatment, she said.

Research has shown that those types of programs have much lower recidivism rates compared to those sent to jails.

Simonich is hopeful that the election results will force Los Angeles County to step up to provide more resources for such programs and to finally put a more concrete timeline on reforms such as closing Men’s Central, she said.

“I’m hopeful and optimistic that the board will take away from these results that funding services and being serious about safety is what their constituents want and need now,” she said.