A federal court judge on Wednesday, April 19, ordered a contempt hearing against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for allegedly violating a court order to fix admittedly abysmal conditions at its jail intake center, marked by overflowing toilets and the chaining of mentally ill inmates to a bench for hours.
U.S. District Court Judge Dean D. Pregerson ordered a hearing in 60 days on a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to fine the Sheriff’s Department for failing to abide by a preliminary injunction issued in September. A date has not yet been set.
“It’s not a remedy I would do lightly, but it’s one I am not shy about doing as well,” Pregerson said.
The injunction prohibited inmates from being chained to a front bench at the Inmate Reception Center for more than four hours and required that the center be kept sanitary and provide adequate medical care. Responding to complaints that inmates were crammed together, sleeping head-to-foot on concrete floors, the injunction required they be moved out of the IRC into secure housing within 24 hours.
The intake center at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles processes inmates before they are transferred to other jails in the county system. Many of them are homeless or mentally ill.
“Yet the evidence indisputably shows the IRC yet again has long delays in processing and intake of detainees, and people continue to suffer serious deprivations while in appalling conditions,” the ACLU alleged in a court filing.
In their contempt motion, ACLU attorneys argued the Sheriff’s Department’s intake center has a long history of mistreating inmates and being in poor condition, with improvements coming only intermittently and temporarily.
Compounding the problems inherent with an aged, decrepit jail, the mentally ill inmate population has skyrocketed in recent years, with half of those incarcerated similarly afflicted, said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU…
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