By Keri Blakinger and Rebecca Ellis | LA Times
In the summer of 2019, justice reformers celebrated because the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors scrapped a controversial $1.7-billion plan to replace the county’s oldest lockup — the dungeon-like Men’s Central Jail on Bauchet Street — with a jail-like mental health facility.
Buoyed by a rising tide of prison reforms across the country, county leaders decided to focus instead on decreasing the jail population by creating more alternatives to incarceration. The new goal would be to close Men’s Central Jail without building a replacement.
Five years later, there are roughly 5,000 fewer inmates — but Men’s Central Jail is still open. And at the state level, the tides are changing, as voters are set to consider increasing the penalties for low-level theft and some drug crimes, both moves that could balloon the jail population.
Read more at: LA Times
