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Something is definitely going on in the county jails across California.
Since the state started sending thousands of inmates to local lockups instead of prisons, a large rise in deadly violence has surged.
This seems to be a result of a new criminal justice transformation that has left many sheriffs unprepared to handle the new and dangerous population of inmates.
Back in 2011, the U.S Supreme Court ordered California to overhaul its overcrowded prisons. Ever since this order was made, the inmate-on-inmate homicides rate has gone up nearly 46% in county jails statewide.
These killings have tripled and in some cases even quadrupled in several counties.
The Supreme Courts ruling was made to prevent prisons from getting to overcrowded, but it's led jails to mirror the same problem.
How did no one see this happening before?
Inmates are being stabbed, strangled, and even bludgeoned. Bodies are constantly being moved all while inmates are wiping away before guards notice.
Because of the extreme amount of people, staff at the jails are constantly missing several of the crimes while they are happening and forced to deal with the bodies hours later.
In California, more than 70,000 inmates are being held across 56 counties with jails. Most of these inmates are serving multiyear sentences in jails that were only meant to hold people for no more than a year.
Even worse, many of these inmates suffer mental illness and chronic medical conditions are not receiving the proper help that is needed for them.
Hopefully the state is able to fix this problem as soon as possible, so they can prevent more lives from being lost.
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