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 have advanced a proposal to try to fix the problem. The Sheriff's Department has only 23 operable buses out of a total of 82, the AP reports, and there have been days when as few as six were running. 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," Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to implement an interim plan to get more 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. A report on whether the proposal is feasible, and how to pay for it, is due in 45 days, the Daily News reported. The situation is aggravated by the fact that about half of those in county lockups are awaiting pretrial and have not been sentenced for a crime. Many sit in jail because they can't post bail.
The current county budget includes money to buy 20 additional buses, but those purchases had not happened as of Tuesday. The board said it will take up to 1½ years for the new buses to arrive and be fortified with security renovations. The sheriff's department has not received a single new bus since 2018, Supervisor Hilda Solis said. The buses currently in operation—which the county report said take 1,500 inmates daily to courthouses, medical appointments, or to state prison—may not last through the end of the year, she said.
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