The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department should reverse its decision to bar a chaplain from the Men’s Central Jail, Human Rights Watch said today. Citing privacy concerns, the department revoked Javier Stauring’s access to the jail on June 20, one day after he publicly criticized detention practices for youths in the jail.
In a letter to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Human Rights Watch urged the chaplain's reinstatement.
Stauring had spoken at a protest in front of the jail, questioning whether harsh conditions in the jail were a factor in suicide attempts by two boys on May 24. One of the boys had a history of mental illness and had previously attempted suicide while in police custody.
The department initially told a second chaplain, the Rev. Greg Boyle, that he would also be denied entry to the jail, but it later stated that Father Boyle’s access had not been revoked.
“The sheriff’s department is attacking the wrong problem in the wrong way,” said Michael Bochenek, counsel to the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. “There are some serious allegations of abuse in the jail, and the department’s first priority should be to take a hard look at them.”
Two youths in the jail have attempted suicide in the last month and others have spoken to Human Rights Watch and to news reporters about abusive conditions there.
Human Rights Watch interviewed the two chaplains and reviewed the press coverage of their public statements, concluding in its letter to the department that the two had not acted improperly. In their remarks, the two had described overall conditions in the jail. The news reports also identified specific youths and provided details about their cases, but in every instance the accounts came from the youths themselves or their family members.
The juvenile module in the Men’s Central Jail holds between 30 and 50 youths under the age of 18, more than any other adult jail in California. Most of these youths are pretrial detainees; a handful is serving sentences of less than one year.
Youths in the juvenile module are generally locked in windowless single cells for twenty-three-and-a-half hours each day. In addition to a 30-minute period each day to shower and make telephone calls, they have three hours of recreation once each week in individual rooftop cages containing a pull-up bar and a telephone. Other than these periods, family and attorney visits, and trips to the nurse, they remain in their cells with little or nothing to do.
Human Rights Watch began an investigation of detention conditions for youths at the jail at the beginning of the year, and it toured the Men’s Central Jail on May 14. The organization wrote to the sheriff’s department after the two suicide attempts, calling for a thorough review of mental health services at the jail.
