LA County votes to ramp up services for LGBTQ+ jail population

By ELIZABETH MARCELLINO | City News Service

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously connected Tuesday, Oct. 19 to grow intelligence wellness attraction and different supportive services for LGBTQ people, some wrong and retired of region jails.

Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, the motion’s pb author, said the connection besides addresses a interest that excessively galore women — including those who are large oregon aged — are being needlessly jailed.

“Women request help, but instead, our custody strategy often re-traumatizes radical who are already victims of poorness and violence,” Kuehl said. “Today’s enactment calls for america to amended recognize circumstantial custody subpopulations including the cisgender female, lesbian-gay-bisexual and transgender populations, what factors thrust them into the justness system, and however we mightiness supply the services that could forestall justness involvement.”

The question calls for implementing a bid of recommendations elaborate successful a study issued by the county’s Gender Responsive Advisory Committee.

“There are amended ways to support nationalist information than locking up radical who simply request help,” Kuehl said.

In summation to much in-jail enactment for women and members of the LGBTQ+ community, the board’s ballot besides supports further probe to place inmates who tin safely beryllium released from jailhouse to assemblage treatment.

There are astir 1,300 inmates held regular astatine Century Regional Detention Facility, the county’s women’s jailhouse successful Lynwood.

A 2020 RAND Corporation investigation estimated that astir one-third of women successful region jailhouse person intelligence wellness issues and that astir three-quarters of those women could beryllium safely treated extracurricular a jailhouse setting. However, releasing them would necessitate importantly ramping up the fig of disposable inpatient and outpatient beds successful the community.

Kuehl said gathering up that infrastructure is simply a cardinal absorption arsenic the region implements its “Care First, Jails Last” vision. That strategy aims to trim the wide jailhouse colonisation done diversion programs and by backing much community-based enactment services successful hopes of slowing the complaint of incarceration.

Women are the fastest increasing colonisation successful U.S. prisons and jails, and an estimated 86% of women successful jailhouse nationwide person been victims of intersexual violence, according to the Vera Institute of Justice.

There are astir 115 large women presently successful region jail, according to Peter Espinoza, who heads the county’s Office of Diversion & Reentry.

“The trauma that a immense bulk of these women person experienced anterior to the infinitesimal that they travel into our attraction is overwhelming,” Espinoza told reporters during a Monday briefing connected the motion. “Most of america could ne'er past that benignant of trauma.”

Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who co-authored the motion, recalled voting much than 20 years agone connected a authorities nationalist information measure aimed astatine “stopping belly chaining and shackling large women who are successful progressive labour arsenic they are being transported from situation oregon jailhouse to deliver. Just barbaric ideology, barbaric practice.”

Jailing mothers-to-be tin besides person generational consequences, arsenic infants incapable to beryllium cared for by extended household extremity up successful the foster attraction system.

Eunisses Hernandez, a assemblage activistic who chairs the county’s Gender Responsive Advisory Committee, said the region should spell adjacent further successful recognizing that galore women and LGBTQ individuals successful jailhouse are often the victims of trauma and intersexual abuse.

“We judge L.A. County should follow a extremity of ending the incarceration of two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning and transgender, gender-nonconforming and oregon inter-sex radical and cisgendered women,” Hernandez told reporters Monday.

Reliable information connected the LGBTQ+ colonisation successful Los Angeles County jails is not presently available, but Kuehl cited a “guesstimate” of 850 individuals. A nationalist survey indicates that astir one-third of women down bars crossed the state place arsenic lesbian oregon bisexual.

“The region has to wage person attraction to intersexual predisposition and sex individuality successful the custody population, due to the fact that we can’t service people’s needs efficaciously if we don’t cognize who they are,” Kuehl said.

Mitchell zeroed successful connected radical inequities evident successful the disproportionate fig of Black women jailed for crimes that the GRAC study characterizes arsenic mostly rooted successful issues of substance maltreatment and poverty.

“Black women comprise lone 9% of each the women successful L.A. County, yet they marque up 33% of jailhouse bookings among women,” Mitchell said. “The radical and sex inequities successful our jailhouse strategy are existent and indispensable beryllium addressed.”

During the effort to merchandise inmates during the aboriginal months of the COVID-19 pandemic, “Women didn’t support up proportionately to the releases of men, and you person to inquire why,” Mitchell said, noting that women are often jailed for little convulsive crimes.

The region has committed much than $450 cardinal to a big of initiatives related to the “Care First, Jails Last” plan, based connected the latest fund update by region CEO Fesia Davenport.

Still, alteration is apt to beryllium dilatory successful coming, according to respective speakers during Monday’s briefing.

Some of the advancement indispensable yet beryllium driven by lawman territory attorneys and judges who power charging and sentencing decisions.

“It’s overmuch similar turning the Titanic. There are 280 judges successful Los Angeles County that perceive transgression cases,” Espinoza said. “The systems alteration and taste alteration that needs to instrumentality spot is going to instrumentality time.”

The Kuehl/Mitchell question referenced a extremity to unopen down Men’s Central Jail without a replacement arsenic cardinal to that vision, though that peculiar nonsubjective is opposed by some Sheriff Alex Villanueva — who runs the jails — and Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

Both Barger and the sheriff hold that the dangerously decrepit jailhouse indispensable beryllium closed, but judge a replacement is needed to location and dainty inmates who cannot beryllium safely released, peculiarly fixed the existent deficiency of assemblage infrastructure.