A guide for families after a death in the Los Angeles County jails

If your son, daughter, spouse or parent died in LA County jail, we are deeply sorry. Many families learn about an LA County jail death through a short phone call and very few answers. This guide is meant to give you some of those answers, in plain language.

It covers the whole Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department jail system: what the department's own death records show, what the State Attorney General and court monitors have found, who can be held responsible, what other families have recovered, and the deadline for filing a claim against the county. If your loved one was held at a specific jail, see also our guides to deaths at Men's Central Jail and Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood.

How many people have died in LA County jails?

Facility	Los Angeles County jail system: Men's Central Jail, Twin Towers, Century Regional Detention Facility, North County Correctional Facility, Pitchess Detention Center and the Inmate Reception Center
Operated by	Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD), Custody Division. Medical and mental health care is provided by the county's own Correctional Health Services.
Location	Downtown Los Angeles (Bauchet Street), Lynwood and Castaic
Population	13,200 average daily population; 12,404 rated beds (LASD fourth-quarter 2025 report)
Deaths in custody	2023: 45 · 2024: 32 · 2025: 46 · 2026: 31 through Sept. 21 (LASD death disclosures)
Oversight	Rosas use-of-force settlement; U.S. Department of Justice mental health settlement; Office of Inspector General; Civilian Oversight Commission; Sybil Brand Commission

According to the Sheriff's Department's own in-custody death disclosures, 46 people died in its custody in 2025, up from 32 in 2024. LA Public Press found that this was a 44% increase and the second-deadliest year in about two decades. The pace has stayed high: as of Oct. 11, 2026, the department listed 31 deaths in 2026, the latest dated Sept. 21, with 9 causes still pending. The Vera Institute counted 154 deaths from the start of 2023 to September 2026 and found that 63% of the people who died were being held before trial, not serving a sentence.

The department's posted list may not be complete. Bolts reported that the 2023 list left out former NFL player Stanley Wilson Jr., whose family later sued the county.

For 2025, the department classified 27 deaths as natural, 10 as accidents, 8 as suicides and 1 as a homicide. The 8 suicides were more than double the 3 recorded in each of the two prior years. The department reports where a person died, not where they first became ill. In 2025, 21 people died at Los Angeles General Medical Center after being taken there from a jail, so the counts for each jail building understate the real numbers.

A label of "natural" does not end the questions. The Vera Institute reported that researchers found evidence of physical harm in more than half of the deaths the coroner had ruled natural. As of May 2026, 46% of the people in the jails had a mental illness, according to the department's mental health count.

What the Attorney General and court monitors have found

On Sept. 8, 2025, Attorney General Rob Bonta sued Los Angeles County, the Sheriff's Department, Sheriff Robert Luna and Correctional Health Services. The complaint alleges broken toilets, vermin, moldy food, a lack of clean water, very little time out of cells, inadequate medical and mental health care, and preventable deaths, including suicides. It alleges that more than 345 people died in the jails from 2016 to 2025 and that about 37.5% of those deaths came from preventable circumstances. The county has called the complaint "outdated information." The case, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, asks a court to order changes; we found no reported resolution as of October 2026. It does not seek money for families, so families must bring their own claims.

The complaint's other allegations line up with what many families describe:

• About 20% of deaths from 2018 to 2022 were overdoses.
• Heart disease is the leading cause of death, and 90% of those who died from it were under 65.
• At least 11 deaths from 2018 to 2024 involved late, missed or inadequate safety checks.
• North County and Pitchess have no urgent care facility.

Overcrowding. In late 2025 the rated jails held about 10% more people than their rated capacity, leaving out a nearly empty fire camp, according to the Sheriff's quarterly population report. North County Correctional Facility was 39% over capacity, and Pitchess North was 61% over.

Federal oversight. Under the Rosas settlement of 2014, a federal monitoring panel watches deputy use of force at Men's Central Jail, Twin Towers and the Inmate Reception Center. In December 2025 the panel reported 80% compliance and 805 use-of-force incidents in 2024. Our guide to LASD deputy misconduct covers force and deputy gangs in more detail. A separate 2015 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice covers mental health care and suicide prevention. According to the county's DOJ Compliance Office, 43 of its 69 provisions were in sustained substantial compliance.

Board action. In May 2025, the Board of Supervisors ordered a plan to reduce deaths after 20 deaths in the first 20 weeks of the year, including 3 in one day. On March 3, 2026, after 10 deaths in the first two months of the year, the Board voted 4–0, with one abstention, for a broader accountability plan: screening everyone who enters the jails for drugs, randomized safety checks, more cameras, easy access to naloxone, working emergency equipment and faster medical requests, with a public report back within 120 days, as LAist also reported.

The jails in the LA County system

• Men's Central Jail, downtown, had more deaths in 2026 through Sept. 21 than any other jail building. See the Men's Central Jail guide.
• Twin Towers Correctional Facility, next door, is the system's main mental health housing. It recorded 6 deaths in 2025.
• Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood is the county's only women's jail. In October 2025, 38 women filed a federal lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by male deputies there. If that is part of your family's experience, see our sexual abuse practice.
• North County Correctional Facility and Pitchess in Castaic are the most crowded, by the department's own numbers.

Who is responsible for a death in LA County jail custody?

In Los Angeles County, the county itself is almost always the main defendant. Deputies work for the Sheriff's Department, and the doctors, nurses and mental health staff work for Correctional Health Services, another county department. Unlike some counties, Los Angeles does not hand jail medical care to a private company. So a claim about missed medication, an ignored emergency or a skipped safety check is usually a claim against the county.

A family may also sue individual deputies or clinicians under the federal civil-rights law, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and may sue the county for policies, customs or training failures that caused the death. For people held before trial, medical-care claims arise under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The estate can bring a survival claim for the losses the person had before death, and close family members, such as a spouse or children, can bring a wrongful death claim. Parents or others who depended on the person may qualify in some circumstances. In federal civil-rights cases, federal courts in California have allowed the estate to recover for the person's own suffering in some cases.

Recent settlements and verdicts

These are reported results in Los Angeles County custody cases brought by families or injured people. They were obtained by other law firms, not by LaCour Trial Lawyers.

"Recommended" means the county Claims Board recommended the amount; we did not confirm the Board of Supervisors' final vote. The family of Stanley Wilson Jr., who died in February 2023, is still suing the county in Superior Court, as reported by Courthouse News. For results across the state, see our table of California jail death settlements and verdicts, and for what drives the numbers, how much a jail death lawsuit is worth. Every case is different. Past results, including those listed here, do not predict the outcome of any other case.

Hurt in custody, not killed?

Many people leave the LA County jails alive but badly hurt: beaten by deputies or another person in custody, left with an infection or injury that was never treated, or cut off from blood pressure, seizure, psychiatric or diabetes medication. The Wesley Alarcio case above shows that these injury claims can be as serious as a death case. The same six-month claim deadline applies to an injury.

Our guides explain the main kinds of cases: being beaten by deputies in jail, being denied medication in jail, and jail medical neglect and deliberate indifference. If any of this happened to you or a family member, you can ask for a free, confidential review.

How to file a claim against Los Angeles County, and when

Before suing the county on state-law claims, such as wrongful death, negligence or the Bane Act, you must present a written government claim within six months of the death (Government Code § 911.2). According to the Board of Supervisors' claims page:

• File with the Executive Officer, Board of Supervisors, Attention: Claims, 500 W. Temple Street, Room 383, Los Angeles, CA 90012.
• Deliver it in person or by U.S. mail. No online filing is listed.
• Use one county claim form for each person making a claim.
• Questions go to the Claims Unit at (213) 974-1440.

If the county rejects the claim in writing, you generally have six months from that notice to file suit. Late-claim relief requires an application within one year and is granted only on narrow grounds. Federal civil-rights claims do not need a government claim and generally must be filed within two years.

What goes in the claim matters. In the Wilson case, the county argued that each legal theory must appear in the government claim. A judge rejected that argument in July 2026, but the safer course is to describe every possible failure in the claim: force, medical care, mental health care and jail conditions.

What to do in the first weeks

Our step-by-step guide for when a loved one dies in jail covers this in more depth. In Los Angeles County:

1. Contact the Medical Examiner. The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner is at 1104 N. Mission Road, Los Angeles, CA 90033, (323) 343-0714. For autopsy reports, call Records at (323) 343-0695. For personal property, call (323) 343-0515. Death certificates for deaths in the past year come from the Department of Public Health, according to the Medical Examiner's family page.
2. Think about an independent autopsy early. The families in several Los Angeles cases, including the Wilson family, obtained one.
3. Check the Sheriff's death list. The LASD in-custody death page lists the date, facility, manner and cause, but not names. Write down the entry that matches your loved one.
4. Do not sign anything from the county or the Sheriff's Department without legal advice.
5. Keep every letter, voicemail and jail call, and write down names and dates while they are fresh.
6. Call a lawyer well before six months pass. We send preservation letters for body-worn and fixed-camera video, safety-check logs and Correctional Health Services records.

Talking to an LA County jail death lawyer at LaCour

LaCour Trial Lawyers is headquartered in Pasadena and handles police misconduct and wrongful death in custody cases across Los Angeles County and the rest of California. A partner leads every case, Spanish-speaking lawyers are available, and you pay no fee unless there is a recovery. For the statewide picture, see our guide to deaths in California jails and prisons, or ask for a free, confidential review.

Frequently asked questions

This guide is general information about California and federal law and about public records as of its date. It is not legal advice, and reading it or contacting us does not create an attorney–client relationship. Allegations in lawsuits are claims, not findings. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Attorney advertising.