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Lack of buses keeps Los Angeles jail inmates from court appearances and contributes to overcrowding (abcnews.go.com)
submitted 8 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
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Up to one-third of the 12,000 inmates in Los Angeles County jails can’t get to their court appearances because of a shortage of functioning buses, and county supervisors this week advanced a proposal to try and fix the problem. 

The LA County Sheriff’s Department currently has only 23 operable buses out of a total of 82, and there have been days when as few as six were running, supervisors said. 

Officials said the breakdown of the inmate transportation system has kept the county's seven jails overcrowded with incarcerated people who might have been released by a judge or sentenced to a state prison — if they had appeared in court.

“Transportation should not be a barrier to administering justice. Having individuals sit in our jails because we can’t transport them to court is simply unacceptable,” Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said. 

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to implement an interim plan to get more working buses running from jails to courthouses and medical appointments. It includes borrowing vehicles from neighboring counties and asking the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to help transport inmates to state prisons.

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[-] tal@lemmy.today 24 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I feel like the bigger question here is how we got to this point rather than the question of how it's being dealt with. Why are only 28% of the busses are operational now and as few as 7% have been operational?

Like, I get that they require maintenance, but are these particularly breakdown-prone? If they had a surge in demand that overwhelmed whoever currently handles maintenance, is it practical to have some private organization do maintenance on the busses?

It costs the county between $1.2 million and $1.6 million each year to maintain the fleet of aging buses

So that's maybe $14k to $20k a year per bus in maintenance. Is that a reasonable expenditure, or unexpectedly high relative to other busses?

[-] Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago

Because no one gives a fuck about prisoners (brown ppl) in this country. Treating prisoners as human beings means you won't get reelected. We like to blame politicians but this is the US as a whole.

In posts on lemmy you'll see ppl frothing at the mouth for prisoners to be executed by the state, or raped/murdered in prison. The only thing keeping this country from looking like a lynch mob is the pageantry of the courts.

[-] aniki@lemm.ee 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

For a commercial vehicle that's cheap AF. But this is LA, one of the poorest cities in the w.......... wait a minute.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

googles

This is talking about school busses, but I'd assume that they're pretty much the same:

https://www.busboss.com/blog/school-bus-maintenance-an-analysis-of-costs

According to these results, the average cost of school bus maintenance for districts that operate more than 100 vehicles is just over $5,500 per year. For districts with less than 100 vehicles, the average cost is similar, coming in at $43 less per year.

The average age of buses in fleets of both sizes was reported as 6 to 10 years. Of course, the newer the buses, the less they generally cost to maintain, but on average, labor expenses ran around $1,500 to $1,600 per bus.

The article did say that they were older, but it sounds like the maintenance expenditure on the prison busses is 3x to 4x that.

[-] aniki@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The money isn't the problem. It's people skimming off the top of the prison industry that are the problem.

A business lease and insurance on an F150 is going to run you around 10-20k a year.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's people skimming off the top of the prison industry that are the problem.

Maybe. If they're spending 3x to 4x and have less than a quarter of the fleet functioning, that does seem like a kind of large discrepancy. I'd kind of want to see what the correlation with age is, and the bus age.

A business lease and insurance on an F150 is going to run you around 10-20k a year.

That might be true, but the $1.2m to $1.6m per year figure is maintenance, which is a different expense from financing on the bus or insurance; they shouldn't be directly comparable. Someone isn't going to average $10-20k a year on maintenance for an F150 (or at least I'd hope they aren't).

EDIT: apparently this has been an ongoing problem. This article says that availability was down to close to 60% in 2022.

https://laist.com/news/criminal-justice/nearly-40-of-lasd-jail-buses-are-out-of-service-and-some-incarcerated-people-are-missing-court-dates

It also has the name of the company that does the maintenance; it's apparently not a part of the sheriff's office.

The Sheriff’s Department has a roughly $22 million contract with Centerra Integrated Services, LLC, for maintenance services.

They interviewed a mechanic that chalked it up to COVID-19:

The mechanic said a garage near Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic usually helps service LASD buses, but some employees there have been sidelined by COVID-19.

The Sheriff's Department said that the problem was that it hadn't bought new busses for five years:

The department said part of the transportation problem stems from aging buses and the fact that it has not bought new buses in five years. It blamed “unfunded or underfunded” needs in the department; however, its overall budget has increased year over year.

But my point is, somehow in two years, they apparently went from a little over 60% availability, which was considered a newsworthy concern then, to something like 7% at the nadir to apparently 28% now.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

I'd kind of want to see what the correlation with age is, and the bus age.

I don't think that matters, because it's not an excuse. If the buses are expensive to maintain because they're old, then the negligence or corruption simply stems from failing to replace the buses in a timely fashion instead of failing to maintain them. Either way, the people in charge are to blame.

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Because the LASD is a corrupt organisation and their funding is used to buy shiny toys for the cops.

[-] YaDownWitCPP@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

It should be illegal for corrupt police organizations to to receive any public funding.

[-] verdantbanana@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

the US keeps voting in leaders that either promise to fix issues like this or does not do anything period but stir the pot like Trump

this was Biden's last campaign promise by the way to do something about the police issues

Biden has to be able to take responsibility at some point

"It is the Republican's and or Democrat's fault my job performance sucks." should not be enough to get someone to the whitehouse

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

This guy's comment history suggests to me they're trying to instill hopelessness so people don't vote. And when people don't vote... well, we get another shit show.

[-] exanime@lemmy.today 17 points 8 months ago

Ah the USA... The richest third world country on planet Earth

[-] Steve@startrek.website 9 points 8 months ago

What happened to Zoom?

[-] CluckN@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

He lost to the Flash didn’t you watch the show?

[-] Inucune@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

If I fail to appear in court because there is no transportation, what happens?

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

They'll put you in jail. Hey, problem solved!

[-] Witchfire@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

They send a personal transport vehicle to arrest and/or shoot you

this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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