The California Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Monday, Sept. 8, accusing the county of persistent unconstitutional and inhumane conditions inside its jail system, including rat and roach infestations, feces smeared on walls and a lack of access to healthcare for inmates.
Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the lawsuit during a press conference and said that, unlike the Torrance Police Department, which entered into an agreement with the AG’s Office to reform that agency last month following an investigation, the Sheriff’s Department, which oversees the county’s jail system, did nothing.
“While the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Luna have made a number of reforms to patrol operations during the course of our investigation, they have remained obstinate on the issue of improving the unsafe and unconstitutional conditions at county jails,” Bonta said in a statement.
“We need comprehensive reform now, and that’s what this lawsuit is about,” he said at Monday morning’s press conference.
The announcement of the lawsuit was the culmination of an investigation that started in 2021, which found that the jails were uninhabitable and under-resourced, with inmates dealing with filthy cells, broken or overflowing toilets and no clean water for drinking or bathing, the AG’s office said.
Investigators also found that inmates were provided with spoiled, moldy and nutritionally inadequate meals, little or no access to hygiene supplies such as soap, toilet paper or menstrual products, little or no clean bedding and almost no time outside their cells, officials said.
The AG’s office said over the past three years that the number of preventable deaths inside the jails “has continued to climb under Sheriff Luna.The lack of access to medical and mental health care also leaves incarcerated persons woefully ill-equipped to re-enter society at large and hinders any meaningful rehabilitation of those serving sentences.”
Bonta said the rise in preventable deaths was occurring despite a drop in jail population.
In October 2024, Sybil Brand Commissioner Haley Broder walked with another inspector through a housing unit in the Men’s Central Jail and broke into a fit of wheezing coughs as they left. Despite working in war-torn countries, disaster zones and refugee camps, she described her visit to the jail as “horrific” with “some of the worst conditions I’ve ever seen.”
The AG’s office alleged the county and LASD have been aware of the issues for decades, but have resisted oversight and accountability, instead spending millions of dollars to settle litigation about abuses in the jails.
Officials with LASD Monday morning they were preparing a statement, but had not issued one as of late morning.
The AG’s office said the lawsuit “seeks injunctive and declaratory relief” that would require the county and sheriff’s officials to “implement overarching reforms in county jails.”
“Los Angeles operates the largest jail system in the United States, and one of the most problematic,” Bonta said Monday morning. “When we’re talking about feces smeared on the walls and medical care denied to those in need, we’re talking about a disrespect for the basic dignity of our fellow humans and a violation of their most fundamental constitutional rights. We’re confident the court will agree.”
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