Screen capture from surveillance video shows sheriff's deputies kneeling on a prisoner's neck inside an LA County jail around 2012. Jail surveillance video screen grab.
California's Attorney General announced on September 8 that the state Department of Justice is suing Los Angeles County and the LA County Sheriff's Department for the "humanitarian crisis" at the county jails, calling them uninhabitable. He described inmates in overcrowded, filthy conditions, with roaches, rats, and insect infestations, a lack of clean water, and moldy and spoiled food. Prisoners have little to no access to soap, toilet paper, and menstrual products; little to no clean clothing and bedding; and almost no time outside their cells. These conditions are monstrous, a form of torture.
And, according to the California Attorney General,"More alarming, people are dying." There have been 114 in-custody deaths in LA County jails since the beginning of 2023. So far this year 37 prisoners—more than one a week—have died, the highest number of in-custody deaths in at least two decades.
LA County operates the largest jail system in the country, with more than 13,000 prisoners, including over 1,500 women, in its 131 jails.1 The statistics on who is in these jails point to the unrelenting oppression of Black people: although Black people make up eight percent of LA County's population, 30 percent of those incarcerated in its jails are Black. White people are 25 percent of the county population, while only 13 percent of those incarcerated are white. Latinos make up 49 percent of the total county population, and 54 percent of those in jail.
Why Are Prisoners Disproportionately Black?
Why do Black people turn up in these dungeons way disproportionate to their share of the population? Why do they end up dead as punishment for a simple misdemeanor—or often no crime at all—at the hands of the police or the prison guards?
The short answer is this: We live under a system—capitalism-imperialism—a system of vicious exploitation and oppression, here and around the world. This system has robbed large numbers of people—especially youth in the inner cities—of any way of making a meaningful life, of a future to look forward to. As Bob Avakian (BA) said in his social media message @BobAvakianOfficial REVOLUTION #131, “crime is a real problem. But fascism is not the answer to crime—fascism is itself a monstrous crime”:
In reality, the fundamental cause of “Black-on-Black” crime is this system of capitalism-imperialism—it is this system confining masses of Black people in conditions of deprivation, degradation and hopelessness, and continually pumping at them the “dog eat dog” mentality that fuels this cut-throat system of exploitation and oppression, from top to bottom.
This system that rules over us could not function—it would “come unraveled,” or be torn apart—without the police and prisons performing all this repression, as viciously and violently as necessary, especially against Black, Latino, and Native people. This terrible generation-after-generation problem could be dealt with—and could only be dealt with—through a revolution. We’ll get into that later in the article. But first let’s go deeper into this horror at LA County.
The Worst Kept Secret
Rev. Gary Williams, Helen Jones, and James Nelson, organizers against horrific jail conditions in LA, who have spent time in Men's Central Jail or have lost loved ones inside it. Photo: Vera Institute of Justice
These outrageous conditions are the County's and state's worst kept secret. The state’s suit says that LASD jails have a “longstanding history of deplorable conditions and constitutional violations.” An ACLU 2022 lawsuit called the conditions "medieval."
James Nelson, part of a movement to shut down Men’s Central Jail, part of the LA County jails, was interviewed for a March 2023 article from Vera Institute of Justice: “'The County Jail Has Always Been a Murder Ground': Stories from Men’s Central Jail.” Nelson was incarcerated in the MCJ for several months in 1986 while awaiting trial. He said, “The county jail has always been a murder ground. People have always come up missing.” And it’s true now, he says, based on his work with families of people currently inside, and with people who’ve recently been released.
Nelson called sheriffs' violence at the jails a matter of routine. For example, a guy and his cellmate were seen walking around, tired of being locked up in a cage. “And this guy was killed just for roaming around. The [sheriff’s deputies] beat both of them up. One of them made it back, but his celly was killed, his neck was broken. They told his family that they had handcuffed him and that he fell down the escalator. But we knew the truth.”
Nelson said that “once you’re in MCJ, you’re at the mercy of the sheriff’s deputies who run the jail. And they are a gang unto themselves.... They function like a gang, they behave as gang members. They wrongfully kill people.” He added, “They also try to deflect stuff.... People ‘commit suicide,’ but bodies come home and are beat up, their internal organs are busted. How did he hang himself, but everything in his body is busted up?”
“They beat John, and they left evidence all over his body.”
Helen Jones's son, John Horton, died inside MCJ in March 2009 at the age of 22—one of 38 people who died in county jails that year. The LA County coroner’s office ruled his death a suicide. But Jones said her son was murdered.
John was there for 30 days, with a low-level, nonviolent drug charge, waiting to be transferred from MCJ to prison. The sheriff’s deputies began holding him in solitary confinement—in a dimly lit room with just a bed in it. They only allowed Helen Jones to see her son once. Then the sheriff’s deputies notified her that John was dead.
The authorities wouldn't say how John Horton died. But when Helen got her son’s body back, she, her husband, and a best friend examined his body. “If he was in solitary confinement, how did he get all these injuries?... They hit John with a flashlight, left the print of the flashlight on his forehead. He had a blood clot; they broke his nose. They busted his liver, busted his kidney, busted his pancreas, busted his intestines. They severely injured his pelvis, busted a two-inch muscle in his back. [There was] a big scar on his shoulder where the skin was off. [They] busted his lip.”
Jones’s lawsuit against the County for John Horton’s death exposed the county coroner’s complicity in covering up violence in county jails. Researchers at UCLA later studied autopsy reports of 59 deaths in LA County jails between 2009 and 2019. What they found was that the majority of cases ruled “natural deaths” included evidence of physical violence. Their report concluded: “The majority of Black and Latinx men are not dying from ‘natural causes’ but from the actions of jail deputies and carceral staff.”
We Don’t Have to Live This Way
There have been repeated, righteous demands to shut down LA County's Men's Central Jail, and to dramatically reduce the numbers sent to jail. But the truth is there are hellhole jails throughout this country. For instance, a 2022 report on the notorious Rikers Island jail complex in New York City is titled “It's a Torture Chamber.”
To again turn to Bob Avakian’s social media messages, a few months back, in REVOLUTION #95, he said: In response to a critical point raised by a gang member: the revolution answers YES.
That critical question to which the revolution answers “YES” was put to those who run this system now: “Gangs will never end—you gonna give all of us jobs?”
In reply BA stated:
Listen to and watch message Revolution #95 from Bob Avakian
The truth is that this system in this country has robbed large numbers of people of a decent life, locking many out of the formal economy—especially youth in the inner cities—and this has fed the growth of gangs and violence among the people forced into this situation.
But, with the completely different system that can be brought into being through a real revolution, this situation can be radically changed, and a basic part of that will be a whole different economy—which, yes, will provide everyone with meaningful work.
As we revcoms have made clear, in the statement We Need And We Demand: A Whole New Way To Live, A Fundamentally Different System, this fundamentally different system will not be based on the U.S. Constitution, which was written by and has served the interests of slave-owning and capitalist exploiters. It will be based on a radically different Constitution: The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have written. (This Constitution and “We Need And We Demand” are available at revcom.us)
As “We Need And We Demand” spells out, with the system based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic there will be:
A Whole Different Economy—To Meet Fundamental Needs and Serve Highest Interests.
BA goes deeply into this in the rest of his message.
If the horror we have described of LA County Jail and every other hellhole in this country haunts you… if the lives of Black and other oppressed youth squandered outrages you… you must get into these and other social media messages from Bob Avakian, and get with the revcoms now.
