The problem of the juvenile halls in LA county goes beyond funds

A bill heading to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk could direct hundreds of millions of state dollars to Los Angeles County’s troubled juvenile halls, but youth justice advocates and two county supervisors are pushing for a veto, arguing it would waste money on a “very broken system.”

AB 695, introduced by assemblymember Blanca Pacheco, would give the Board of State and Community Corrections — an agency that recently shuttered two of the county's juvenile halls over poor conditions — the ability to provide state grants to Los Angeles County for infrastructure improvements, including the construction of new living quarters for youth in custody and modernized spaces for rehabilitative and educational programs.

The bill passed in the Legislature the same week that the BSCC warned it may be forced to close more of Los Angeles County's juvenile facilities, including the newly reopened Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, over failed inspections.

Although AB 695 doesn't set a dollar amount, the Senate Appropriations Committee estimates the hit to the state's general fund will be in the “high hundreds of millions” of dollars — potentially up to $1 billion — to address the “critical needs of the youth facilities in Los Angeles.”

Opponents worry that such a high level of funding will only make the county more reliant on its flawed Probation Department and the prison-like detention facilities that the county has pledged to replace — with little progress so far — with “less restrictive” alternatives.

'Youth Justice Reimagined' Instead, the youth reform advocates want to see L.A. County follow through with the implementation of Youth Justice Reimagined, a proposal unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors in 2020. That plan would place youth in the custody of the newly created Department of Youth Development and dedicate resources to diversion and intervention programs, in- home confinement and the construction of smaller “safe and secure healing centers” spread throughout the county.

More money for better buildings won't solve these problems. It's true that Central Juvenile Hall, now finally closed for good, is more than a century old, but the problem was never the hardware — the buildings, the equipment, the vehicles. The problem is the software — the people and their willingness to do the jobs for which they are paid. And a Probation Department culture that makes crises a daily routine.