LA Inspector General Max Huntsman warns about the future of local jails
Nov. 6, 2024 By Alexandra Evans
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Inspector General warns that “when the government acts like it's above the law, we don't really have democracy.”
LA Jails are the largest mental health care provider in the United States, the Vera Institute reported. Max Huntsman, the head of the LA Office of the Inspector General (OIG), said understaffing causes people to suffer medically. This is unconstitutional “because it's predictable that it will cause deaths,” Huntsman said.
Huntsman's job is to preserve democracy by paying attention to when and where executives and agencies overstep. He said, “If you are a strong law and order person, you should want the police to operate in a lawful and effective manner, because otherwise you're not getting law and order.” Instead, “You're getting law enforcement gangs…in the sheriff's department, you're getting vigilante justice really, rather than actual rule of law.”
The OIG oversees the conduct and constitutionality of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, Police Department and jail systems. As Inspector General, Huntsman witnesses the implementation of consent decrees. These decrees “matter for a court to be forced to look closely at a problem that people usually keep under wraps,” he said.
Consent decrees are court-enforced performance improvement plans settled between the United States, as a party, and a federal agency. There are six active consent decrees in LA County that address the use of force and conditions in jails.
Referencing the Heritage Foundation’s document ““Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” dubbed Project 2025 a “presidential transition project” and the attitudes of Trump and his previous appointees, it is likely these decrees will be eliminated.
Project 2025 orders a review of “Lawless Policies, Investigations, and Cases, Including All Existing Consent Decrees.” This comes from Chapter 17 which outlines plans for the Department of Justice. No language in the chapter specifies what would be an “unnecessary or outdated consent decree.” The author of this chapter is Gene Hamilton, Trump’s former appointee to the DOJ and Department of Homeland Security. He will likely return and follow through with these plans.
Trump uses force. Earlier this year, he deemed the police force against campus protestors at Columbia a “beautiful thing to watch.” Trump’s former Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the DOJ to “‘pull back’ on the practices of investigating police abuse and misconduct and abandon civil rights abuse litigation,” according to the ACLU.
The practices Sessions discourages investigation into is the exact reason for the OIG’s existence. Yet, departments the OIG investigates continue to “aggressively resist information gathering regarding misconduct at the management level, regarding constitutional violations, like the conditions in the jails regarding mentally ill people,” Huntsman said.
Loyola Marymount University Law Professor Eric Miller serves on the Sybil Brand Commission (SBC). He is one of the few commissioners who can show up to LA jails unannounced and unaccompanied with access to all areas. Miller confirms that the conditions still require attention from these commissions and decrees.
Miller said conditions in LA jails are “obviously unacceptable,” even under current consent decrees. He described understaffing that allows for 40 consecutive hours of cell time, strict standards that prevent inmates from going to enrichment programming and ignorance towards broken drains that cause mentally ill prisoners to live in flooded cells for extended periods of time.
Miller gave one example of sheriff negligence when he described a scene at Twin Towers: “One of the folks in the cell decided to use his feces to do his graffiti…the cell was covered with shit.” When Miller asked why they allow someone to exist in a room covered in feces, a sheriff said, “That was what he wanted to do…he decorated his cell.” Based on observations like this, the 2023 Annual Report report from the SBC said the state of mental health care in jails is a “humanitarian crisis.”
Hamilton writes that the policies, cases, and decrees they will review “undermine public safety,” even though “public safety” is explicitly written into the goals of the consent decrees. The 2015 LA mental health care consent decree said it is “expected to have collateral benefits that promote public safety,” when they expand “comprehensive and effective” mental health care. The ACLU reported that “providing prisoners with care today means having healthier neighbors and communities tomorrow.”
Hamilton is also concerned “whether criminals will be punished,” not whether or not they will be rehabilitated, which is the ultimate goal of prisons and confinement institutions. Based on Miller’s observations, he said “the appearance of the jail is not one that is, to use the words of the Board of Supervisors, care first…it's all punish first.”
Conditions of confinement must be constitutional to be in accordance with the law. Huntsman said the government, but especially police “have the power of life and death, both in jails and on the streets, so very important that people not politicize this issue.”
As the most massive provider of mental health treatment, people will die when heads turn away from LA jail transparency and reform efforts. Some people believe in punishment over rehabilitation due to their unfounded beliefs about criminals and the system altogether. Despite these beliefs, the constitution prevails. Violations to the eighth and fourteenth amendment brought the consent decrees in the first place.
Huntsman said “We have constitutional provisions that limit the way we can treat people. We need to follow them,” and added “it's a fight that needs to be fought every single day, forever.”