What <i>are</i> the rules for L.A.’s jails?The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department is a public agency, and it should be transparent about its policies, including on the use of force in the jails.

A strange thing has happened in the Los Angeles County jails in the six months since the FBI launched an investigation into allegations of abuse and misconduct by sheriff’s deputies: The use of force has gone down by 16%. The number of times deputies relied on force to subdue inmates decreased from 296 during the previous six months to 248 from September through February, according to data Sheriff Lee Baca provided to the Board of Supervisors this month.

If those numbers mean that deputies are using force more judiciously and wisely, that’s obviously a good thing. Special Counsel Merrick Bobb, who serves as the county’s independent monitor, believes that deputies are showing greater restraint as a result of heightened public scrutiny and attention. The Sheriff’s Department, for its part, suggests that closer supervision and greater adherence to department policies have led to the reduction.

We’d like to think Baca is paying better attention to how deputies comply with the rules. But frankly, there is no way to know — because we don’t know exactly what the rules are. The department’s use-of-force rules are mostly off-limits to The Times’ editorial board and the public in general. That’s absurd. TheLos Angeles County Sheriff’s Departmentis a public agency. There’s no reason its policies should be sheltered from public scrutiny

The department did release some policies in response to the editorial board’s request, including Taser procedures and revised reporting requirements. But it declined to release its use-of-force manual. What the board was able to review appeared to be a professional and thoughtful set of guidelines. However, policies were clearly missing; rules governing such procedures as “total appendage restraint,” referred to in the documents we received, are still not public.

The department argues that it must withhold some information out of concern for the safety of deputies, presumably because detainees might be able to game the system if they knew the rules in all their detail. Although we appreciate that safety is paramount, surely any inmate who is intent on harming a deputy or other inmates need not consult a manual to do so. And those with ties to violent gangs or other groups need only ask those already inside the lockups to gain a firm understanding of how deputies work.

Baca should realize that as an elected official who oversees a public law enforcement agency, he and his office have an obligation to be open and transparent. If the sheriff needs help figuring out just how it’s done, he might consider consulting with the Los Angeles Police Department, which posts all of its policies on its official website.