Our Stories

Care First, Jails Last

Los Angeles County has selected LISC to implement key parts of an extraordinary initiative to provide alternatives to incarceration. The $61 million, two-year pilot is working to divert people from jail and instead offer services to help overcome housing instability and mental health and substance abuse challenges. It will also provide a model for how to turn the page on mass incarceration.

For years, Los Angeles County has operated the largest jail system in the country, with some 17,000 individuals in custody on any given day. But now the county has embarked on one of the nation’s most significant and comprehensive efforts to divert people from incarceration and instead provide them with services they may need to overcome homelessness, mental health problems, and substance use disorders.

“Care first, jails last” is the ethic that guides the Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) Initiative of LA County’s Chief Executive Office.

In April, the county selected LISC to implement key parts of the initiative in a $61 million, two-year pilot. As directors of LISC Los Angeles and of LISC’s national Safety & Justice team, we are honored and eager for this opportunity to advance humane, community-centered solutions to mass incarceration.

We’ll be helping to administer the public-private initiative in Los Angeles, but also studying this innovative model so we can help seed similar efforts in places across the country. We’ll be inviting private funders to join us, both in augmenting LA’s urgent justice project and in fostering alternatives to incarceration in other communities.

In LA County, our first task is to engage lead service providers who will establish a round-the-clock presence in ten LA County police precincts and a consistent presence in eight local courts, so that Angelenos who otherwise might be headed to a jail cell on low-level charges can instead opt for community-centered rehabilitative care either before a police report is filed or at arraignment in court.

“We are partnering with service organizations well acquainted with the challenges and harsh inequities that justice-involved individuals confront.”

We are partnering with service organizations well acquainted with the challenges and harsh inequities that justice-involved individuals confront, and capable of offering them wraparound services—whether that means a safe place to lay their heads, mental health treatment, help recovering from addiction, or even job and financial counseling. Participants who complete an individualized care plan will not face prosecution.

Already, at the Los Angeles Police Department’s 77th Street Division headquarters in South LA, officers are screening arrestees for immediate diversion from the usual criminal processing to a non-profit whose staff are located onsite. Given longstanding tensions between police and communities across the U.S.—tensions that have reached a fever pitch in recent times—we anticipate there will be growing pains. We understand it will take time for both law enforcement and would-be participants to see that diversion is a viable and desirable alternative. And we’re committed to helping build that trust.

Just as important, we at LISC are also assisting with the design and launch of the LA County ATI “Incubation Academy” to prepare small and mid-sized service organizations to take part in diversion. We know that putting nonviolent community members behind bars accomplishes little besides compounding their suffering, leading to displacement from homes, lost wages, and family separation. In any diversion program, of course, the question arises: diversion to what and to whom?

There’s an acute shortage of affordable and supportive housing in LA, and a dearth of organizations (as in other parts of the country) ready to win government contracts and take on the work of case management and service provision. We want to grow that ecosystem of care, making sure that the organizations empowered in this process reflect and elevate the voices of those most impacted by mass incarceration—communities of color and justice-involved individuals.

“We want to grow [an] ecosystem of care, making sure that the organizations empowered in this process reflect and elevate the voices of those most impacted by mass incarceration—communities of color and justice-involved individuals.”

This new Academy will draw on LISC’s deep expertise in organizational capacity building with an eye to racial equity and inclusion. We expect, over two years, to train more than 100 organizations in such areas as fiscal management, contract compliance, and program reporting. At the end of the training more groups, with authentic ties to their communities, will be ready to join the ATI Initiative and help fellow community members avoid jail in favor of trauma-informed care that will help them lead healthy, stable lives in their communities.

LA County’s jail system, like smaller systems across the U.S., reflects decades of policy and practice, from the rapid deinstitutionalization of people with mental illness to the tragic War on Drugs to California’s 1994 “three strikes” law that led to widespread incarceration for multiple but minor offenses. A snapshot of August 2020 reveals that more than 40 percent of the county’s jail population had not yet been convicted of a crime, yet spent months in detention.

More than half were incarcerated on nonserious or nonviolent charges. Nearly a third of those jailed in LA County need mental health treatment (making this jail system the largest de facto mental health institution in the country), and well over half have substance use disorders. Black and Latinx Angelenos are jailed at rates disproportionate to their presence in the population, while White Angelenos have a disproportionately low representation in jail.

It’s not right, it’s not just, and it simply doesn’t make sense if our goal is safe, healthy individuals and communities. It is, moreover, a pattern we at LISC see repeated in cities and rural areas across America. 

LA County’s “care first, jails last” initiative emerged from an extraordinary consensus in the sprawling, diverse metropolis. In February 2019 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously established the Alternatives to Incarceration Work Group, a consortium of county agencies and departments, advocates, and community leaders. This group held 56 meetings and gathered input from more than a thousand individuals who shared their ideas and lived experiences. The strategies put forth in its 2020 final report form the basis of the ATI Initiative.

In LA County, stakeholders are clearly ready to walk the walk—to begin the sustained, hard work of systems reform that’s required to move past decades of needless and cruel incarceration. Indeed, the nation’s conscience is now awakened to this cause, and we believe many other communities are also ready to get to work. With its national-local structure and 40-year tradition of pooling public and private funds to help empower disinvested places and lift up voices too long unheard, LISC is ready, too.

Learn more about the County of Los Angeles ATI Initiative here and here.

Apply to take part in the ATI Incubation Academy here.

Mona MangatABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mona Mangat, Vice President, Safety & Justice Initiatives
Mona directs national safety and justice initiatives at LISC, including overseeing efforts in dozens of cities funded through private and government investments. Her experience includes providing technical assistance to community-law enforcement alliances seeking to reduce crime while building the trust and infrastructure that make communities resilient and safe.