Men's Central Jail is a

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD), officially the County of Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, is a law enforcement agency serving Los Angeles County, California. LASD is the largest sheriff's department in the United States a ...

county jail for men in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...

, United States. Built in 1963, it is one of the oldest

county jail A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correct ...

s in California. The Men's Central Jail is located at 441 Bauchet St., Los Angeles 90012. The Men's Central Jail houses men who are awaiting trial or who have been convicted of crimes. The Men's Central Jail is considered one of the largest jails in the world. In May 2013, along with the adjacent

Twin Towers Correctional Facility The Twin Towers Correctional Facility, also referred to in the media as Twin Towers Jail, is a complex in Los Angeles, California. The facility is located at 450 Bauchet Street, in Los Angeles, California and is operated by the Los Angeles Cou ...

, Men's Central Jail was ranked as one of the ten worst prisons in the United States, based on reporting in ''Mother Jones'' magazine. On July 7, 2020, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4–0 to pursue a plan to close the Men's Central Jail within 12 months. In voting to eventually close the 57-year-old facility, county supervisors said they wanted to focus on community-based programs to treat mental health challenges of those entering and exiting the jail system administered by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The vote came amid deliberate inmate reductions during

outbreaks In epidemiology, an outbreak is a sudden increase in occurrences of a disease when cases are in excess of normal expectancy for the location or season. It may affect a small and localized group or impact upon thousands of people across an entire ...

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

and the

Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...

movement

protests A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one. Protests can be thought of as acts of coopera ...

over police violence and the

murder of George Floyd On , George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was murdered in the U.S. city of Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white police officer. Floyd had been arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill. Chauvin knelt on Floyd's n ...

Construction and population

The construction of the Men's Central Jail was finished in 1963. The original building was designed to house 3,323 inmates. In 1976, an addition was added to the structure at the cost of $35 million, and by December 1990, inmate capacity was 5,276. Men's Central Jail has severe

overcrowding Overcrowding or crowding is the condition where more people are located within a given space than is considered tolerable from a safety and health perspective. Safety and health perspectives depend on current environments and on local cultural n ...

, leading to problems such as inmates lacking shower facilities, very short recreation times out of their cells, wearing dirty clothes for up to a week, and inmates sleeping on floors for extended periods of time. In March 1997, the inmate population was about 13,000, and saw similarly high numbers by June 2015, where the inmate population was about 17,000 and increased to 19,000 by August, where the legal limits on the jail population were only for 15,000 inmates.

Notable inmates

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, recording artist *

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, actor, ''

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'' *

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, rapper *

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, actor *

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, actor *

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, comedian *

Tommy Lee Thomas Lee Bass (born October 3, 1962) is an American musician and founding member of the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe. As well as being the band's long-term drummer, Lee founded rap metal band Methods of Mayhem and has pursued solo musical ...

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Richard Ramirez Ricardo "Richard" Leyva Muñoz Ramirez (; February 29, 1960 – June 7, 2013), dubbed the Night Stalker, the Valley Intruder (as his attacks were first clustered in the San Gabriel Valley), and the Walk-in Killer was an American serial kill ...

* O. J. Simpson *

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, reality TV personality *

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Ron Jeremy Ronald Jeremy Hyatt (born March 12, 1953) is an American former pornographic actor. Nicknamed "The Hedgehog", Jeremy was ranked by AVN at No. 1 in their "50 Top Porn Stars of All Time" list. Jeremy has also made a number of non-pornographic ...

, pornographic actor *

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, actor * Mart Jackson, rapper

Services

Men's Central Jail provides some services to its inmates. Inmates can attend self-help classes on

domestic violence Domestic violence (also known as domestic abuse or family violence) is violence or other abuse that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage or cohabitation. ''Domestic violence'' is often used as a synonym for ''intimate partner ...

alcohol abuse Alcohol abuse encompasses a spectrum of unhealthy alcohol drinking behaviors, ranging from binge drinking to alcohol dependence, in extreme cases resulting in health problems for individuals and large scale social problems such as alcohol-relat ...

, and

substance abuse Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, is the use of a drug in amounts or by methods which are harmful to the individual or others. It is a form of substance-related disorder. Differing definitions of drug abuse are used in public health, ...

. Religious services are provided to inmates in the wake of several

ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

lawsuits. As of 2004, selected inmates can earn a

GED The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. It is an alternative to the US high ...

while incarcerated.

Violence and lawsuits

The ACLU has sued Men's Central Jail for major

civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...

violations. The

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

has also sued the Men's Central Jail. In 2013, federal prosecutors charged 18 Sheriff's Deputies with

excessive use of force Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation. Police brutality includes, but is not limited to, ...

. In June 2015, Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputies were found guilty of beating a handcuffed man at the Men's Central Jail.

References

External links