As of Fiscal Year 2006/2007, LAC had a total of 1,519 staff and an annual operating budget of $100 million. As of September 2007, it had a design capacity of 2,300 but a total institution population of 4,976, for an occupancy rate of 216.3 percent. As of April 30, 2020, LAC was incarcerating people at 137.3% of its design capacity, with 3,158 occupants. LAC's include the following facilities:
Level I housing: Open dormitories without a secure perimeter
Level IV housing: Cells, fenced or walled perimeters, electronic security, more staff and armed officers both inside and outside the installation
Reception Center : provides short term housing to process, classify and evaluate incoming inmate
History
Before the prison opened in 1993, Los Angeles County hosted no prisons but accounted for forty percent of California's state-prison inmates. "Most of Lancaster's civic leaders and residents" opposed the building of the prison, and four inmates escaped from LAC in its first year of operation. Nevertheless, by 2000 city residents' opinions of the prison had improved so much that a proposal to increase the proportion of maximum-security inmates received little criticism. A 2006–2007 conversion "of roughly half of" LAC's facilities decreased the number of maximum security inmates and increased the number of reception center inmates. Since reception center inmates are at the prison for shorter times than maximum security inmates, the conversion may "reduce the number of families that will relocate to the region to be near a family member who is in the prison" and "reduce the number of prisoners who will want to relocate to the area after serving their sentences or after being released on parole". During the Covid-19 of 2020 pandemic, an inmate at California State Prison in Lancaster, was placed in isolation. On March 19 2020, he reported that he was not feeling well. The agency said the patient was tested the following day and the results were received Sunday.
Notable inmates
Current
Samuel Little: Serial killer convicted of killing eight women, though he is suspected of killing as many as 90 in total.
