The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California issued a report Thursday critical of the Orange County Jail system for not doing enough to prevent in-custody deaths.<\/p>\n
The report examines 119 in-custody deaths and concludes the conditions of incarceration contribute to \u201cpremature and preventable deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report\u2019s findings \u201creveal a system in which internal investigations lack transparency and accountability: not one of the 119 deaths reviewed resulted in the district attorney finding the Sheriff\u2019s Department at fault.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ACLU\u2019s report said the report exposes a \u201cpattern of systemic failure. Nearly half of those who died did so within one month of booking, and many were struggling with substance use disorders, mental illness, or chronic health conditions that were ignored or mishandled.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report concluded that the \u201cmost effective way to prevent deaths in custody is to reduce reliance on incarceration by investing in community-based treatment, housing and diversion programs that keep people safe and alive outside of jail.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report noted that as of October 2025 at least eight inmates in Orange County died that year. The report seized on a quote from Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes that the inmates are \u201cnot dying because they\u2019re in jail. They are dying from things that are life choices\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The report said \u201cthe most common reasons for death in custody were issues related to the jails\u2019 intake `triage\u2019 process, suicide, physical violence, substance use and medical neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report said of the 119 inmate deaths at least 60 \u201cdied within a month of booking. Of those, at least 35 died within a week of booking.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report concluded the District Attorney\u2019s Office failed to find any \u201cfault for any of the 119 deaths in the dataset.\u201d The District Attorney\u2019s Office investigations examine whether those involved should face criminal charges and not whether the deaths were policy failures.<\/p>\n
Representatives from the Sheriff\u2019s Department and the District Attorney\u2019s Office did not immediately comment on the report. District Attorney spokeswoman Kimberly Edds said her office had not reviewed the report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California issued a report Thursday critical of the Orange County Jail…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[32905,163,165,164,166,65523,4589,17729,14665,171,3729],"class_list":["post-126371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-aclu","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-county","tag-critical","tag-deaths","tag-issues","tag-jails","tag-orange","tag-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}