Editorial: The Real LA Model of Juvenile Justice: Delay, Disaster, Shame

In the troubled youth homes and probation camps of Los Angeles County, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between imminent redemption and imminent collapse. For example, the probation department is putting 100 less experienced officers off the field to supplement a youthful station staff so depleted by job openings, injuries, fear and disdain for management that barely 11% of officers get to work.

Also this week, 16 “credible messengers” — trained volunteers who spent time under probation jurisdiction as teens or teens or have other relevant experience — will meet at the dangerous Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar and the newer, safer, but report safer hall Kilpatrick campus in Malibu still struggles to give young offenders the benefit of their experience. They are steered by the country’s new youth wing, which was originally envisioned as an agency that could take over all youth operations on a trial basis as early as 2025. At the moment it seems unlikely that this transfer will take place.

Conditions in Sylmar (referred to almost everywhere as Barry J by probation officers, youths and families) are appalling. Agents work nearly 24 hours a day filling in for their missing colleagues, leaving them exhausted and short-tempered. Classes and activities are often canceled because teachers and contractors are too scared to enter. Interior walls are covered in graffiti, windows are smashed, living quarters are destroyed. Teens charged with crimes and awaiting trial have little to do every day other than play video games or — because security is lax despite barbed wire, guards, and x-ray machines — get high on illegal drugs that somehow find their way find inside. Earlier this month, at least two teenagers at Barry J’s overdosed on fentanyl and were given Narcan.

The situation is only slightly better at Central Juvenile Hall near downtown, which, like Barry J, aims to detain, protect and train young people accused of crime for a few weeks while awaiting trial. Some young people even stay in youth homes for up to two years.

Problems also plague the handful of probation camps – facilities such as Campus Kilpatrick in less stark environments where juveniles are held by courts for extended periods of rehabilitation and treatment. The Board of Trustees ordered Kilpatrick to be rebuilt from the ground up to accommodate a new form of care based on small groups and consistent staff attention. County officials proudly referred to their program as the LA model. But it was never implemented as intended because it is incompatible with employment contracts that require work schedules more suited to officers than juniors.

The crisis is compounded by an influx of young offenders from the Juvenile Justice Department, part of California’s prison system. The government will leave the juvenile court on July 1 and return the more difficult cases to the provinces. The board of directors had time last year to prepare for the transition, but misused it by arguing over which camp should house the transferred youth in whose district.

On Tuesday, supervisors fired Chief Probation Officer Adolfo Gonzales and briefly received a series of orders designed to contain the chaos in the corridors and camps, but postponed discussion for two weeks. A plan that may have come in time a year ago involved the temporary reopening of a third juvenile detention facility – the currently vacant Los Padrinos in Downey – to relieve pressure on Barry J. Accompanying proposals include a variety of transfers and refurbishments. But the situation has deteriorated to a point where young people and staff are at risk and facilities are falling apart.

The number of youth incarcerated in the country has declined, and the greatly reduced workload should have been an opportunity to improve rehabilitation programs for the most difficult youth. Instead, fewer cases led to neglected care, understaffing, and organizational collapse.

“We are lucky that no one has died,” Mili Kakani, probation inspector, said at a rally on Thursday. “If we rely on luck, we don’t have much left.”

At the same meeting, interim chief probation officer Karen Fletcher told the committee, which had joined Gonzales in asking for her resignation earlier this month, that the department was committed to using the LA model in every community and camp. But this is the real LA model: a cumbersome board of directors, inadequate standards, looming deadlines — and unscrupulous treatment of youth taken into county custody by the courts.

The Parole Division is currently under investigation by the Board of State and Community Corrections, which has the authority to revoke permits to operate juvenile facilities and is subject to a 2021 settlement with the Department of Justice over troubling deficiencies in prison conditions and the education. . The intervention is necessary.

But it’s worth remembering that a settlement with the US Justice Department over similar shortcomings more than a decade ago resulted in short-lived improvements, followed by a return to dysfunction. Unless state oversight enforces permanent improvement, there will be little choice but for the federal agencies to backtrack, this time with a civil rights lawsuit and a consent decree and much less tolerance for objections from probation officers and county supervisors.