Twenty-six people have died in LA County jails in 2025, the second-most deaths to date of any year on record. 103 have died since the start of 2023.
On July 12, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) reported that another person had died in its custody. That death was 2025’s 26th county jail death. This year’s staggering tally is already three-fourths of last year’s total of 32, with about half the year still to go.
Since the beginning of 2023, Vera has chronicled the deaths in Los Angeles County jails, compiling demographic information and—when made publicly available, which they have not been for more than 18 months—the names of the deceased. The data is sobering: currently, 103 people have died in county jail custody since the start of 2023, and at several points this year, the rate of deaths has matched or exceeded that of 2021, the deadliest year in the county’s jail system in the past 20 years…