On Tuesday, April 9, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a motion to move the county’s Jail Closure Implementation Team (JCIT) out of one department and into another, and to “empower” JCIT to actually close the dangerously run-down Men’s Central Jail, a goal the county has been working toward for more than a decade.

Thursday, April 11, was not a cheering day for those who care about the young people in the care of Los Angeles County Probation. On Thursday morning during a hearing in a Sylmar juvenile courtroom, attorneys played a video for those present showing a youth as he was physically attacked by one kid after another, in a dayroom at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall.

On Thursday, January 25, the team of five appellate attorneys representing Mark Ridley-Thomas filed their 102-page brief in order to appeal their client’s conviction with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Now, on Monday, April 8, federal prosecutors are expected to file their response to...

Witnessla gets regular calls from sources inside LA County’s jail system. Mostly the callers just want to talk to someone. But they also call when there’s been another death in Men’s Central Jail, or Twin Towers. Seven people have died in the county’s jails this year. At...

On March 21, the LA County Public Defender’s Office officially launched the Community Outreach Court (COC), a program to help unhoused community members clear up legal issues that may block them from accessing housing. During a three-month pilot period, the program, run in partnership with the Alternate Public Defender’s...

When last year Los Angeles County Sheriff’s lieutenant Eric Strong was loaned to LA County Probation as their Chief Safety and Security Officer, not everyone was convinced it was a great idea to bring in an outsider. Strong, as readers may remember, is one of the cluster of people...

Four men who lost nearly 80 years to imprisonment combined after being wrongfully convicted of murder, based on faulty eyewitness testimony, have been exonerated in the first two-and-a-half months of 2024. The first two newly freed men, Jofama Coleman and Abel Soto, were 20 and 15 years old when they...

The California Supreme Court today upheld limits on when young people convicted of serious crimes are eligible for parole hearings, finding that a man convicted of a 1989 slaying cannot seek parole under recent policy changes that were meant to give more inmates a shot at leaving prison. The statute...

In the first two months of 2024, California lawmakers have introduced new noteworthy criminal justice bills and reintroduced bills that failed to make it to the governor’s desk in 2023. Below, we’ve gathered some of the bills readers may want to have on their radar this legislative season.

As we race toward the March 5, 2024, primary election, let’s take one more quick look at the eleven challengers, each of whom are hoping to somehow gather enough votes to make it into the November runoff with the goal of unseating Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón who, since December 7, 2020, has led the nation’s largest prosecutor’s office.

For the last 24 years, incarceration has influenced my outlook on my future. But where I reside now — in a Texas prison — does not discourage me. It fuels me to rise above my surroundings. After all, achievements don’t come without adversity. In my future, I hope to obtain my freedom and become a better me.

Over the past three decades, clearance rates for serious crimes have dropped by 41 percent in California, according to a new report by Dr. Mike Males, Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ). Crime clearance rates are the closest measures we have to showing how...

At or around 4 p.m. on Thursday, February 15, after many hours of discussion, plus a string of comments from youth advocates, probation staff, and others, the California Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) completed the task of finding both Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, and Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall to be “unsuitable” for youth and young adults to be in residence.

On February 15, 2024, which is next Thursday, the members of The California Board of State and Community Corrections—the BSCC—will decide whether or not LA County’s main youth probation facility, Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, is or is not “suitable,” to be inhabited by youth and young adults.

The story below is another in WLA’s series presenting the remarkable investigative work of Open Vallejo, an award-winning, independent, nonprofit newsroom that serves Vallejo, CA, a small city long burdened by police violence, and alarming bouts of government corruption, all of which has been largely neglected by mainstream media.

On January 30, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors received a new five-year plan for closing the dangerously decrepit Men’s Central Jail without a replacement facility. This new plan isn’t the county’s first roadmap for shuttering the jail, nor is it the most expedient. In August...

On Thursday, January 25, the team of five appellate attorneys who are now representing Mark Ridley-Thomas filed their 102-page brief in order to appeal their client’s conviction with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The arguments made in the newly-filed brief, which you can find...