The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES- A federal judge, disgusted at the crowding in Los Angeles County’s Men’s Central Jail, ordered immediate reforms and said a panel of experts should be set up to supervise them.
In an order issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson gave the panel 60 days to develop a plan including “immediate measures for improvement” for the nation’s largest county jail.
Pregerson toured the facility in May and called its overcrowding “not consistent with basic human values.”
The jail is so crowded that six prisoners often are packed into cells designed for three and are kept there for days with no chance to exercise. ACLU officials say those conditions contributed to a series of riots earlier this year in which two inmates were killed and scores were injured.
The Los Angeles County jail system holds an average of 18,000 inmates a day, a third of them at the Men’s Central Jail.
The panel will have representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the county administrative office and a criminal justice planning firm.
The ACLU wants 1,800 high-security inmates moved to the adjacent Twin Towers jail, which is partly empty because of severe understaffing in the sheriff’s department. Sheriff Lee Baca said such a large move is not practical.