California’s Jail Death Review: A Promise Gone Cold

A new law was meant to shine a light on deaths that happen in county jails. The idea was simple: an independent office would look into every case, tell families what happened, and make sure mistakes were fixed. But a year after the law went live, no single review has been finished. The problem started with how the bill was written. The person who helped draft it knew that letting sheriffs investigate deaths in their own jails would create a conflict of interest. Instead of giving the new office real power, the law kept sheriffs in control at every step. In some places the sheriff also acts as the coroner, deciding whether a death was accidental or caused by force. That arrangement is hard to accept in most other states. The new division can ask for records and give suggestions, but it cannot force anyone to comply. It has no authority to set deadlines or punish those who block the process. The law also lets sheriffs redact large amounts of information, so what gets released can be very limited. When agencies delay or refuse to provide documents, the review stalls. The state’s top law‑enforcement official stays silent, and the whole system just waits.A similar failure happened in San Diego County before. A review board had to drop dozens of cases because it was overwhelmed and never produced any findings. The new law spreads that same weakness across the state, creating an oversight system that collapses when faced with a backlog. The legislature, the governor and even the attorney general all played a part in making the law weak. If an oversight system has no teeth, people can ignore it. Families of those who died in jail need real answers, not more paperwork. Officers inside jails need concrete changes, not empty promises. To make the law work, it needs enforceable deadlines, penalties for obstruction, limits on redactions, and a clear path to the attorney general when sheriffs try to block investigations. Until those changes happen, California’s promise of transparency remains just that—a promise.