Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City

Journal. Joining me on the show today is

Stephen Eyed. He's been on the show before. He's a Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow,

the City Journal contributing editor. He researches social policy questions, really emphasizing homelessness,

mental illness, issues like that. His work has appeared in any number of outlets,

in addition to City Journal, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, National

Review. He's the author of the recent book, Homelessness in America, the history and tragedy

of an intractable social problem. And today we're going to be discussing a question that involves

homelessness as explored in his essay in our new issue called Men's Central Madness, which

appears in this summer issue of City Journal and chronicles the movement to close one of Los Angeles

County's main jails. So Steve, thanks very much for

joining us. Thanks for having me, Brian. So yeah, for listeners who aren't familiar with what's

going on in L.A. for more than a decade now, L.A. County officials have been debating the fate of men's central jail, which is this big

correctional facility located near downtown L.A. that's been notorious for its poor inmate conditions,

right? I mean, how big is the jail? It's over 3,000 prisoners, right?

Yeah, so about a quarter of the total system capacity, and this is a very large system.

L.A. County is the largest county in America. And so it also has 40% of the county's highest security inmates, so people who are potentially

dangerous.

So since its initial construction, which was in 1963, the jail has expanded several times

over the years to accommodate a growing inmate population. Yet critics have said it doesn't meet

modern standards, that there's a lot of problems with it. They want to shut it down. So let's start

with the conditions at men's central jail. What is the big issue there that has some advocates

...