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Reducing Jail Overcrowding in Los Angeles

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Los Angeles County has asked the Vera Institute to study its criminal justice system, identify inefficiencies, and recommend strategies to make better use of jail space. Vera staff will analyze the county’s jail data, examine policies and processes that affect the jail’s population size, and recommend steps the county can take to alleviate jail overcrowding.

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This work is sponsored by the Los Angeles Board of County Supervisors and the Countywide Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee (CCJCC), a legislatively mandated stakeholder group charged with improving the local criminal justice system. It involves three phases:
 
Phase 1: Data Collection - Staff are developing a plan to collect and analyze information from the county’s criminal justice agencies. Sample information includes how many people are being admitted to the jails, who they are, and how long they stay. Staff will also collect data to assess how people flow through the criminal justice system and will examine criminal court processes, mechanisms that allow people to be released as they await their court date, and alternatives to jail.
 
Phase 2: Analysis - Staff will analyze the jail population to create profiles of typical offenders and discover trends in how jail is being used. They will also identify key decision points that affect the jail population size and bottlenecks that cause inefficiencies and delays that may keep people in jail.
 
Phase 3: Recommendations - In partnership with members of the CCJCC’s Jail Overcrowding Subcommittee, Vera staff will recommend a series of options to address the system’s challenges. These may include calls for new programs, system-wide policy changes, new laws, or reallocating resources.
 
Why Los Angeles?
The Los Angeles County jail is the largest jail in the United States, with approximately 171,000 people booked annually and a 2009 daily population that is close to 19,000—and expected to reach 29,000 by 2019. Chronic overcrowding in the county’s jail facilities has already generated a number of serious problems: the federal government has placed a cap on the number of people the jails can legally house, rehabilitative services are insufficient to serve inmates’ needs, and the jails have high levels of violence—both among inmates and between inmates and correctional officers. Jail overcrowding is not a problem that “belongs” to the jail. It is the result of myriad factors within the criminal justice system, and Vera is taking a comprehensive, system-wide approach to address it.

For more information about CSC's work in Los Angeles County, contact Violet Yu.