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fullscreen The jails in Los Angeles county in the United States are overcrowded because there are no buses that can take prisoners to courts and other jails. Archive image. Photo: Matt York/AP/TT
A lack of functioning buses for prisoner transport has led to overcrowding in Los Angeles county jails in the United States.
Up to a third of the total of 12,000 prisoners have not been able to be transported to the courts to which they were summoned.
This, according to prison officials, has led to Los Angeles’ seven jails being overcrowded because people who might otherwise be released by court or convicted and transferred to state prisons are left with a lack of space as a result.
Of Los Angeles County’s total of 82 prisoner transport buses, only 23 are now operational. On some days, only five or six buses have been in operation.
– Transport should not be an obstacle to justice. The fact that we have individuals sitting in our prisons because we cannot transport them to the courts is completely unacceptable, says Lindsay Horvath who is responsible for overseeing the prisons.
Los Angeles has now developed a plan to make more buses available to transport prisoners. Among other things, they must borrow vehicles from nearby towns and ask the California State Prison Authority for help with transporting prisoners to the state’s prisons.