Custody Operations: Ten Litigation Problems Driving The Department’s Risk

Why this matters jail and detention operations generate a disproportionate share of an agency’s civil exposure. Most people in custody are pretrial detainees - not convicted prisoners - and the law judges their treatment by the “objectively reasonable” standard and not whether a deputy or an officer subjectively intended harm an individual (Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389 (2015)).  Here are the top ten issues for custody operations as seen in litigation proceedings:

The Top Ten Problems

1. Denial of medical care. Missed medications, ignored symptoms, delayed treatment. Courts let these go to trial on an objective reasonable standard; leaving a detainee unmonitored during a medical emergency is the usual fact pattern.
2. Mental-health care and suicide prevention gaps. Poor screening, no monitoring, misused safety cells: these drive the biggest class actions and wrongful-death suits for many departments.
3. Use of force on inmates. Force need only be “objectively unreasonable” to be actionable; in-custody beatings have produced seven-figure verdicts.
4. In-custody deaths — especially restraint during a mental-health crisis. These types of encounters produce the highest-dollar cases. Even a “clean force” verdict can still yield liability for failing to monitor or reposition someone after being restrained.
5. Failure to protect / bad classification. Housing a vulnerable or mentally ill detainee with a known-dangerous cellmate is a recurring issue and results in high verdicts or settlements.
6. Policy and training failures (Monell). The agency itself pays when a pattern is detected that results in harm to an individual (not one bad actor); this is particularly true if the department has documented prior deaths caused by the same issue (the department is “on notice”).
7. Disability / ADA failures. No reasonable accommodation for disabled detainees (lower bunks, accessible facilities, equal programming) is litigation risk exposure for a department.
8. Conditions of confinement. Overcrowding, inadequate exercise, sanitation failures, improper segregation of the mentally ill individuals.
9. Over-detention. Holding anyone past a release order - including immigration detainers - is a viable litigation matter.
10. State-law claims (California Bane Act and a negligence cause of action). California’s Bane Act and state negligence law may implictate the Sheriff personally and the County broadly, and in some instances maybe easier to plead in state court rather a federal cause of action.

What This Costs the Department…

Custody litigation hits budgets in different ways. These figures are illustrative of outcomes from recent California cases.

• Jury verdicts can be catastrophic. A restraint-death case produced an $85 million verdict (later reduced on appeal) (K.J.P. v. Cnty. of San Diego, 621 F. Supp. 3d 1097 (S.D. Cal. 2022)); a prone-restraint death produced a $7.5 million award cut to a $1.5 million judgment (Alves v. Cnty. of Riverside, 135 F.4th 1161 (9th Cir. 2025)); an in-jail beating produced $740,000 plus $210,000 in punitives (Rodriguez v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 891 F.3d 776 (9th Cir. 2018)).
• Attorney’s fees are a separate, often larger hit. Prevailing plaintiffs recover their fees on top of damages - over $5 million in one force case (Rodriguez v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 891 F.3d 776 (9th Cir. 2018)).
• Class-action consent decrees cost for years. They rarely pay damages but impose plaintiff-fee awards and ongoing court monitoring — $2.1 million plus up to $250K/year in one jail (Sacramento) (Mays v. Cnty. of Sacramento, (2019)); $1.25 million plus $150K per year in another (Riverside) (Gray v. Cnty. of Riverside, (2016)) - plus the operational cost of compliance (staffing, facility fixes, new policies).
• Defense is not “free” even when you win. In one case, a “defense verdict” case took over 18 days to try. In the end, the department’s own recoverable costs was only about $66,000 (a mere fraction of what it cost the department to defend on the action. (Green v. Cnty. of Riverside, 238 Cal. App. 4th 1363, 190 Cal. Rptr. 3d 693 (2015)).

Beyond these line items, repeated payouts drive up insurance/pooled-risk premiums and divert command attention away from key operational issues and these costs are not reflected in any verdict sheet.

COMING NEXT

Lowering the Target: Ten Moves to Cut Your Custody Risk Profile. Our next update turns the problem list into a playbook - intake and medical screening, suicide-watch and classification protocols, use-of-force and restraint-after-cuffing rules, ADA compliance, release-timing controls, and the documentation that wins cases before they are filed.