California jails are holding thousands fewer people, but far more are dying in them

Individuals are dying in custody at record rates throughout California. They're dying in little prisons and big prisons, in red counties and blue counties, in rural holding cells and downtown mega-complexes.

The variety of prison deaths is up despite the fact that the variety of people in prison is down.

The state is aware. Reams of reports from oversight companies have consistently indicated issues in individual prisons and the state board that manages them.

Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged almost 5 years ago that the state would take a stronger hand to prevent deaths in the 57 jail systems run by California county constables.

In every year considering that, more individuals have actually died in California prisons than when Newsom made that promise-- striking a high of 215 in 2022. Tulare, San Diego, Kern, Riverside and San Bernardino counties' prisons set records.

Nor was the pandemic the driving element: California in 2022 had the tiniest share of deaths due to natural causes in the previous four years. A surge in overdoses drove the trend of increasing deaths. And nearly every person who passed away was waiting to be tried. A previous CalMatters investigation discovered that three-quarters of those kept in county jails had not been convicted or sentenced, with numerous awaiting trial more than three years.

A state board was expected to put in place measures that would keep prisoners much safer. Newsom devoted to overcoming that board when he said in 2020, "I've got a board that's duty is oversight. I want to see them step things up.".

But since then, Newsom and the Board of State and Community Corrections have actually been not able to slow the deaths. Till recently, the board was not even notified about deaths inside the county-run lockups, and a 2021 State Auditor's report slammed the board for failing to implement its own guidelines and standards on mental health checks and in-cell health checks of prisoners.

The state has actually started to take a somewhat stronger role.

The guv appointed a formerly put behind bars person to the Board of State and Community Corrections, and also signed an expense in 2015 that added to it a licensed healthcare supplier and a certified mental or behavioral health care company.

Following through on his 2021 budget plan proposition to increase the frequency of jail assessments and enable the board to perform them unannounced, Newsom directed an additional $3.1 million each year to the oversight board. The board reported that last year it carried out 31 unannounced prison assessments, a modification from previous practice when it would check out prisons simply as soon as every 2 years, and informed prison authorities in advance when inspectors were coming.

And a new law in July will include a personnel position to review in-custody deaths, a position to be appointed by Newsom and validated by the Senate.

But critics say those steps have been inadequate. For example, the original expense would have put jail death monitors in every county.

From right, Gov. Gavin Newsom, together with former Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, and Attorney General Rob Bonta, speaks in assistance of Prop. 1 throughout a press conference at the United Domestic Workers of America building in San Diego on Feb. 29, 2024. Image by Kristian Carreon for CalMatters.
CalMatters sent out 9 questions to the governor about jail deaths, the efficiency of the state board, and his own 2021 promise to enhance prison oversight.

Newsom's office did not answer the questions, instead sending a list of accomplishments to show "the Governor's comprehensive record in this area." Those primarily used to his policies for state prisons, such as a death sentence moratorium.

When CalMatters asked him about high statewide prison deaths at a March 1 interview in the Inland Empire, Newsom responded by saying:.

" The governor," Newsom stated, "simply signed legislation to really have the ability to develop a point individual specifically responsible for managing what's happening in county prisons, working with (Attorney General Rob Bonta), who's also been advancing investigations. One really close to home here in Riverside County, related to 18 in-custody deaths in 2022 with the existing sheriff.".

The authorities with the greatest influence over what occurs in jails-- the state's elected county constables-- state extra state oversight is unnecessary. California State Sheriffs' Association president Mike Boudreaux, who is likewise the constable of Tulare County, stated he currently solutions to a state oversight board, the state Justice Department, county grand juries, federal courts, state courts and the media.

" What we see is that people slam jails, they criticize sheriffs' offices," Boudreaux said. "And the reality of it is, they've never ever been inside a prison.

In 2011 California-- as it thinned severely overcrowded state prisons by sending out tens of countless recently founded guilty wrongdoers to county-run prisons-- developed an oversight board for jails and jails. This 13-member Board of State and Community Corrections is made up mostly of individuals with law enforcement and probation experience. The governor appoints eight, with one each selected by the Judicial Council of California, Speaker of the Assembly and Senate Rules Committee.

The other 2 present board members are the state prison system's chief and its director of parole operations.

The board's initial objective was to provide independent know-how to jails and jails and function as a "data and details clearinghouse." The board gives out $400 million each year to jails, jails, tribes and neighborhood companies. It likewise sets standards for reformatories, from the per hour checks carried out on prisoners to the time set aside for leisure.

Almost immediately after its formation, the board was confronted with the limits of its powers: It did not have authority to mandate that all California constables report their information-- including in-custody deaths.

When the state board's brand-new customer of in-custody death begins this summer, that will change.

When asked by CalMatters why more people are passing away in California prisons, in spite of a declining prison population, Board of State and Community Corrections representative Adam A. Lwin responded, "The BSCC is not in a position to discuss this question with respect to deaths in jails.".

" Until the passage of (the new law adding a detention screen), the BSCC did not have actually specific obligations related to deaths in custody, beyond inspecting for the local company's policy and procedures associated with reporting on any death in custody," Lwin wrote in action to CalMatters' concerns.

So why are numerous passing away in California jails?

The factors people are dying at record rates in California prisons refer circumstance, although in interviews with more than 70 people associated with California jails systems, from district attorneys and constables to inmates and nurses, some patterns emerged.

Natural causes have actually long represented the greatest share of prison deaths, followed by suicides.

Suicide prevention should be a greater concern for jail staff, stated University of Texas School of Law teacher Michele Deitch, amongst the country's primary authorities on deaths in prisons and jails.

" The huge majority of these deaths are avoidable," she said.

The reasons for a significant variety of deaths for recent years are still pending-- suggesting that the sheriff's workplace hasn't yet determined the cause or the Justice Department hasn't updated the cause in its information collection.

The recent boost in deaths came from the third biggest cause overall, unexpected deaths consisting of fentanyl overdoses. Overdoses represented 43 deaths in 2022.

Fentanyl overdoses provide a far deadlier challenge now than the previous dominant drug in jails, methamphetamine. Other aspects are the exact same ones Newsom pointed out a few years ago: suicide; failures in healthcare or psychiatric evaluations; and less frequently, violence among prisoners or by jail guards.

Protestors hold signs outside the John F. Tavaglione Executive Annex structure in protest of jail deaths in Riverside County, on Oct. 31, 2023. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters.
Shannon Dicus, San Bernardino County's Sheriff and a member of the Board of State and Community Corrections, said the rise in deaths in part reflects trends that are unfolding beyond prisons, including an overstretched mental health system and prevalent use of possibly fatal opiates.

For his deputies, a consistent concern is people who know they are in infraction of their probation terms hiding drugs in their bodies before they're returned to jail.

" So a lot of these folks are producing opiates in their rectum," Dicus stated. "We run canines through. We do a number of things. We're investing $250,000 on body scanners. And what occurs is a few of these people, they'll have it in their bodies where we can't identify it.

" They enter into the prison, they get housed in their basic real estate task, and then suddenly I have seven fentanyl overdoses. Which's the fact.".

Dicus said jails also discover letters sent out to inmates in the mail that were dipped in diluted fentanyl or methamphetamine.

However often the jail-keepers themselves are accountable. During the pandemic, when prisons were closed to visitors, drugs still discovered a way in. Jail deputies in Riverside and Fresno counties have been charged with drug smuggling, and an Alameda County civil grand jury discovered that a personal jail contractor fired the medical director of the county's jails for composing phony prescriptions to obtain opioids for herself.

Sheriffs have actually often withstood outdoors pressure to more closely monitor their workers. In San Diego County jails, where according to Justice Department stats 47 individuals passed away in between 2021 and 2023, Sheriff Kelly Martinez and her predecessor have consistently refused demands from the regional civilian law enforcement evaluation board to put her deputies through scanners before they start their shifts.
Jails might do a much better job beginning at intake and reception, said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project. She noted that people who have actually been detained often are asked deeply personal concerns about their compound use and history of self-harm, within earshot of jail deputies and other inmates.

If they don't disclose that they have drug or alcohol dependency-- maybe fearing that will result in more charges-- Kendrick stated the instant cutoff can present a huge health threat.

And for people who are on psychiatric medication however don't like the side-effects or don't want to disclose their condition, the cessation of their medication can send their psychological health into a tailspin.

The pandemic likewise terribly dinged up jails' ability to supply quality health care, critics compete.

When jails reopened to their regular capacity, Kendrick said, the arrival of new prisoners and the resignations of burned-out healthcare workers stressed the systems beyond their breaking points. "A great deal of prisons have actually stated that they're having problems with correctional and healthcare personnel who stopped throughout the pandemic," she stated.

One of those was Dr. Lauren Wolchok, who worked in Los Angeles County prisons from 2016 to 2021. Before and during the pandemic, she stated, the variety of opioid-dependent patients she saw skyrocketed. But those jails strictly limited opioid treatment, she said, confining it to a little subset of the population that required it.

" I was unable to offer the type of healthcare that I wished to have the ability to use which contributed to burnout for me," Wolchok stated. "I had long dealt with the existential crisis of, am I doing more damage than excellent by working in this dreadful setting or am I sort of fighting versus the system and getting individuals care that they otherwise wouldn't have?

" Especially as the quality of the care that I felt I was delivering decreased, it became harder and harder for me personally to choose that I was battling the good fight.".

Drug overdoses, inadequate medical treatment, suicides-- all of those causes of jail deaths could be minimized by more strict policies. Academics, prisoners and their advocates suggest scanning prison employees for drugs, providing an all set supply of the opioid-blocking naloxone nasal spray, ensuring inmates go through intake in a more private location, carrying out more regular checks of inmates, and instituting local oversight boards.

Those decisions are up to one person: The county constable.

An overdose? Or a heart attack?

Some of California's deadliest prisons remain in Riverside County, where 45 people have died since Jan. 1, 2021. One of them was Richard Matus.

Matus understood he wasn't feeling well days before he passed away.

In journals he kept during his incarceration, which his household offered to CalMatters together with his medical records, Matus complained of sensation ill and receiving no medical help in jail.

" Its tough to handle being treated as an ill animal a feeling like im just waiting to pass away," he wrote in one entry. "Iv put in medical slips to see a physician due to the fact that I felt sick, very lightheaded, bad head ack, seemed like I was running fever and totally lost my sense of odor witch was actually unusual. They never followed up I think it was twice I put in medical slips an no reaction so I gave up.".

Matus, whose household stated he hadn't used drugs besides marijuana before his incarceration, was found dead in his cell on Aug. 10, 2022, of a fentanyl overdose.

In a lawsuit filed in March 2023, Matus' household declares that Matus was lucid and communicative on the phone with his mom, Lisa, hours before his death. They declare that his "alarming need for emergency medical intervention went undetected by the (prison's) custody staff.".

An autopsy conducted 8 hours after Matus' death discovered something else. His left anterior descending artery, which offers half the heart's blood supply and is known colloquially as "the widowmaker," was 80% to 90% obstructed. A medical kind completed by Matus on Sept. 26, 2021, showed that a doctor informed him his cholesterol and high blood pressure were far above regular.

" Every time he grumbled to that (prison medical) workplace, they offered him cholesterol tablets and informed him to lose weight," Matus' mom, Lisa, told CalMatters. "They never ever sent him to the health center, although his high blood pressure and cholesterol was (above typical). The entire time, he required healthcare and they simply neglected him.".

That contention entered into the household's suit.

" Due to the fantastic delays in securing appropriate emergency situation medical attention for Richard Matus, Jr., and the failures on behalf of the (prison's) custody personnel in carrying out the needed security and well-being checks," Matus' family composed in the lawsuit, "Mr. Matus did not react to medical intervention and died.".

The Riverside County Sheriff's Office responded to the claim by denying all liability and said that Matus' death was his own doing.

The family of Richard Matus Jr. stands outside the John F. Tavaglione Executive Annex with memorial photos of Richard, who died in-custody of the Riverside Sheriff's Department in Riverside County. Image by Jules Hotz for CalMatters.
" If Plaintiffs sustained any injury or damages," they wrote, "such injury or damages were solely caused or added to by the wrongful conduct of other entities or persons besides the response Defendants.".

Some sheriffs have changed their practices to avoid in-custody deaths. Others state they're trying to find services. But Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has actually instead taken an adversarial method.

Criticism of his policy and practices, Bianco informed the Riverside Press-Enterprise, are a "political promotion stunt of the far left." He did not answer questions from CalMatters.

After an inmate passed away in 2022, the Riverside Press-Enterprise posted an interview with Bianco. In the comments under the story, someone who recognized himself as Bianco -interacted with commenters, referring to the demands of individuals whose member of the family had actually passed away in his jails.

" Did they require their family members not commit suicide or consume drugs while they remained in custody?" he composed. "Did they ever demand that their family members not dedicate crimes in the first place? Did their moms and dads ever require that they take obligation for their own actions?".

The ACLU sent out a letter in September 2021 demanding that the state examine Riverside County jails. In 2022, another 19 people died, including Matus. After the ACLU wrote once again demanding an inquiry by the state's prison oversight board in early 2023, Attorney General Rob Bonta introduced an investigation.

The Justice Department refused to answer any concerns about its examination. Bianco did.

" This statement comes as a shock however at the exact same time ought to have been gotten out of our California DOJ and the chief law officer who cares more about politics than he does about transparency and the reality," Bianco stated in a video the day the investigation was revealed.

" This examination is based upon nothing but false and misleading declarations and right out lies from activists, including their attorneys. This will prove to be a total wild-goose chase and resources.".

' All we're doing is making suggestions to constables'

The attorney general has 2 open examinations into prisons, one in Riverside County and one in Santa Clara County. The organization charged with managing daily operations of California's jails is the Board of State and Community Corrections.

The board can wield considerable power.

When it repeatedly discovered the Los Angeles juvenile hall disagreed for housing in 2015, it closed down the system and directed the county probation department to discover new housing for about 300 youths.

That was an exception.

A Feb. 9, 2023 board meeting turned controversial when it pertained to the Riverside County prison system, the 15th-largest in the U.S.

Avalon Edwards, a policy partner of Riverside-based social justice company Starting Over Inc., said the board was not enforcing its own requirements of prisoner care.

" If (Riverside County) can eliminate 20 people in 13 months and fail to offer any info to the households affected, stop working to report those deaths to the DOJ within the 10-day mandated reporting duration, continue to lie to the public about the cause of death for all these individuals," he stated, "what are those minimum requirements accomplishing?".

Edwards urged the board to keep financing from noncompliant departments or, if they would not, he asked every board member to resign.

Critics argue that the board lacks the ability to efficiently control jails.

" It is not set up with the kind of enforcement power, or teeth, to be able to meaningfully hold accountable firms that are failing to comply with standards," recently recalled San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin informed CalMatters. "So that's one issue. And I don't state that as a criticism of the organization or individuals there even of the structure.

" I imply, it doesn't have the capability to in fact enforce solutions even when it understands offenses," he said.

2 independent state oversight firms also have discovered fault with the jail and the board system. The Legislative Analyst's Office discovered in 2021 that the board's effectiveness is difficult to evaluate because it's uncertain what the board's mission is. It stated this "undermines the Legislature's capability to examine whether the program is operating efficiently and is consistent with Legislative priorities.".

The State Auditor's Office, on the other hand, zeroed in on San Diego County jails in February 2022. It found that the San Diego Sheriff's Department failed to avoid deaths in its jails and that its practices "likely added to in‑custody deaths." The auditor's office likewise found fault with the state corrections board, saying its prison guidelines are irregular and its responses to the audit were "deceptive or lacking.".

Even one member of the state corrections board feels the board's hands are connected.

" All we're doing is making suggestions to constables," said board member Norma Cumpian. "You're like, hello, 20 people have actually passed away in your jails. We suggest that you, you know, report it quicker. Like, that's not a lot.".

A Tulare County deputy sheriff stands guard at a prisoner real estate system at the Tulare County Adult Pre-Trial Facility on Sept. 18, 2023. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local.
Cumpian, a former inmate who served almost 20 years in jail for killing her abusive partner, said she frequently senses indifference or complacency from her colleagues.

When it comes to strategies to add a detention screen, a suspicious Cumpian stated "I don't understand, this expense is supposed to release reports to the general public. Like, what is that gon na do?".

Dicus, the San Bernardino sheriff who operates the seventh-largest jail system in the U.S., does not see a problem with the method the oversight board operates. He said the oversight board is doing its task in accordance with its objective: evaluating the policies and procedures of the prisons it supervises while guaranteeing facilities are up to code.

He said the blame for in-custody deaths extends beyond the prisons.

" Locally, try getting some aid," Dicus stated. We live in a 24/7 environment where individuals are in crisis.

He said the state needs to reconsider how it operates the social safeguard at the county level, particularly for psychological health and drug abuse.

" It's simply usually this is the method we've dealt with whatever, and we require to break out of that," he said. "I think we need kind of a statewide revisit of what's working and what's not.".