Doctoral Dissertation Research: Hospital Beds and Jail Beds: Los Angeles County and the Imagination of Poverty (1978-2010)

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Los Angeles County government faces annual political debates over the distribution of resources between its public hospital safety net and its vast jail system. For almost three decades policy-makers have grappled with chronically overcrowded jails and hospitals. This project is an archival examination of policy-making concerning jail and public hospital overcrowding in Los Angeles County from 1978 to 2010. It asks the following research question: What changing ideological understandings of poverty might have informed local decision-making to expand and contract hospital and jail beds, shift who gets to sleep in them, and for how long they get to sleep in them? The term "ideological understandings of poverty" makes reference to conceptions about what types of poor people are programs meant to target, what assumptions about their behavior are they meant to correct, and who is and is not eligible for criminal justice and public hospital engagement. The project utilizes archival sources in the form of memos between county administrators and their advisory staff, communication between department heads, consulted reports and studies used to inform policy, meeting minutes, relevant newspaper clippings, and publicity actions. These sources document legislative intent as it evolved in real-time around county crisis events, pilot projects, and other efforts to solve the social problem of hospital and jail overcrowding. The project aims to inform policy-makers regarding their attempts to tackle overcrowding, to engage theory on the deserving and undeserving poor, and to answer recent calls for scholarship that considers the interaction between criminal justice and social welfare policy in contemporary urban America.