Just one month into 2025, six people have already died in Los Angeles County jails. That brings the jails’ death tally to 81 since the start of 2023.

These tragedies underscore the urgency with which the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors must honor its now four-year-old commitment to close Men’s Central Jail and stop this cycle of death.

The deadly start to the year comes as Proposition 36 goes into effect statewide. Prop 36, which passed this past November after a misinformation campaign, is expected to balloon county jail populations by mandating increased prison sentences for some low-level crimes while simultaneously removing funding for vital resources, like drug and mental health treatment, homelessness prevention, and victim services centers. A growing jail population has raised concerns that the death toll may climb even higher this year.

The death toll in LA jails—the nation’s largest jail system—is driven by severe overcrowding, pervasive neglect and mistreatment, inadequate care inside jails, and a failure to offer robust alternatives to incarceration. A horrifying video smuggled out of Men’s Central Jail in June 2023 showed jail staff neglecting to intervene in a violent assault that stretched on for more than 10 minutes. Stories like this emphasize the urgency of reducing the jail population and expanding effective community-based alternatives to incarceration.

“Our jails are killing people—disproportionately Black and Latino men who are held pretrial—because of a culture of impunity and neglect within the LA County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jails,” said Michelle Parris, program director of Vera California. “Jail has become the county’s default response to poverty, houselessness, and other unmet needs, and the people held in them are subjected to foul conditions and cruel treatment. Our communities would be safer if we addressed the root causes of instability by investing in community-based alternatives to incarceration that are proven to work, and that do not result in a new death every week.”

What’s killing people in LA County jails?

Overcrowded facilities are the most significant single factor driving jail deaths in Los Angeles. The jail system has operated as high as 16.7 percent over capacity since the start of 2024. This means that not only are the facilities physically crowded, but resources are also being stretched past their breaking point.

The issues begin in intake, where newly incarcerated people are processed. Those who have passed through the intake facilities have described them as “a living hell,” where people are left to sleep without bedding or blankets on floors covered in garbage and waste.

Beyond the squalid and cramped conditions, overcrowded jails also limit access to resources, especially medical care. Incarcerated people requesting such care say they have faced cruel or indifferent treatment from staff. In particular, Los A County jails provide horrendous standards of mental health care—despite their standing as the "largest mental health institution" in the United States, with 47 percent of people detained there, as of January 2025 , diagnosed with mental health conditions. People have been chained to tables by jail staff, forced to endure filthy living conditions, and sometimes even not been provided clothing. The county has also failed to staff its jails with enough mental health care providers; in February 2023, 44 percent of jail mental health staff positions were vacant.

Severe conditions in the county’s jails provoked an April 2023 visit from a panel appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council and, the following May, triggered protests by facility health care workers, who said that staffing shortages left them unable to provide care to patients in these dangerously overcrowded facilities.

"We know that people who are here deserve humane conditions,” Katrina Thompson, a registered nurse, told CBS News. “They deserve health care . . . and they deserve to be safe when they are here."

Who has died in county jails since January 2023?

Deaths in LA Jails | 2023–2025, by month

Los Angeles County does not report the names of the people who die in its custody of its own volition, providing instead only rudimentary information like the person’s age, date of death, whether they were held pretrial or were awaiting sentencing, and where they were detained. However, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, journalist Keri Blakinger obtained a list of the names of everyone the Sheriff’s Department reported to have died in custody between January and November 2023. Forty-one additional people have died since November 3, 2023; their names have not been reported.

We know less than half the names of the people who have died in custody since the start of 2023, and the county continues to share only sparse details about the nature of the deaths. When autopsy reports are published, organizers say they have provided inconclusive information and, in some cases, have misclassified deaths. Moreover, the death count itself is incomplete. At least one person, former NFL player Stanley Wilson Jr., died while in the county’s custody in February 2023. His death still has not been included in the official count.

What are the demographic breakdowns of in-custody deaths?

Although the county does not disclose the names of those who died in its jails unless legally compelled to, it does share some important demographic information. Of the people who have died in Los Angeles County jails since the start of 2023, 30 percent were Black, and 47 percent were identified by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department as Hispanic. The majority of those who have died—48 of the 81—were held pretrial, many because they could not afford bail.

Deaths in LA Jails | Demographics (2025)

How are people dying?

Los Angeles County has not yet publicly issued causes of death for everyone who has died in county jails in recent months. And even once even once autopsy reports are finalized, they don’t tell the whole story. When the coroner rules that a death is the result of “natural causes,” jail conditions can still be to blame. Researchers have found evidence of physical harm in more than half of “natural” county jail deaths.

For instance, in at least one jail death, LA County reported the cause as natural, even though an inspector general’s report determined that the deceased person showed signs of hypothermia. At the time of this person’s death, people held in the jails slept in garbage bags to keep warm—despite the staff having hundreds of thousands of thermal underwear sets available. Jail officials declined to distribute those sets, stating they were not required to and were concerned that people would destroy or misuse them.

There has also been a dramatic rise in suicide deaths. More people died by suicide in county jails in 2021, the most recent year with complete records, than in any year since 2013. Those suicide deaths were likely driven in part by the jails’ dire conditions, which Mark-Anthony Clayton-Johnson, chair of the Sybil Brand Commission (which inspects county jails), called a “recipe for hopelessness.” Inadequate mental health care only compounds the issue.

What can we do to prevent more people from dying?

A critical first step to prevent more jail deaths is to simply jail fewer people. By reducing the jail population, the county can begin to address the most acute issues threatening the lives of incarcerated people, as well as reduce the burden on staff.

There is hope in that regard. In June 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) settled a lawsuit against the county over the “barbaric” conditions in its jails. The settlement commits the county to a number of limits, including how long people can be detained in its intake facility and how long they can be handcuffed or tethered to chairs and benches there. It also requires that LA County divert some people into alternatives to incarceration rather than detain them in jail.

Alternatives to incarceration, like community-based supportive housing, have been proven safe, successful, and cost effective. Eighty-six percent of participants in one such housing program had no new felony convictions after 12 months, with 74 percent retaining stable housing. The LA jail system—the country’s single largest mental health institution—spends $548 a day to incarcerate someone in mental health units despite costs of just $207 a day to place them in community-based housing and treatment.

If Los Angeles County is interested in building real public safety, investing in these programs—and reducing jail death tolls—is the easiest path forward. A study by the RAND Corporation found that as many as 61 percent of people held in LA County jails with mental health conditions were appropriate candidates for diversion into existing alternatives to incarceration. However, those services have been operating at capacity for some time. The county’s settlement with the ACLU commits it to expanding those offerings by nearly 2,000 beds, which should help meet the urgent need.

It is critical that LA follow through on this commitment, as its recent history is dotted with false starts to reform. In 2021, county leaders pledged to close the decrepit and dangerous Men’s Central Jail within two years. Those two years have long passed, but the jail is still operational with no concrete plans to close in the foreseeable future.

Beyond the immediate next step of reducing the jail population through more robust community-based services, LA County also needs to address the wholly inadequate conditions of the people locked up. Shoddy and understaffed health care services are obviously contributing to these mounting deaths. The county can meet its basic obligation to prevent more deaths by reducing the jail population and backfilling positions for care providers to help alleviate the staffing crisis.

“The prolific use of jail is not making Los Angeles safer,” said Parris. “Research shows even 24 hours in jail is so destabilizing it makes someone more likely to have further contact with the system. Our jails in Los Angeles are not only destabilizing to thousands of people, but also potentially deadly. We need services that can meet people’s needs and prevent crises that lead to incarceration, and we need programs that are a supportive pathway out of jail for those returning to our communities.”