California Strikes To Part Out State-Run Youth Prisons – CBS San Francisco
SACRAMENTO (AP) – California is dismantling its state juvenile prisons and shifting responsibility to the counties 162 years after lawmakers created the first alternative to placing children under the age of 12 alongside adults in San Quentin and Folsom state prisons.
Proponents said the move reflected their belief that children who commit crimes can be reformed and better served if kept closer to their homes.
However, proponents and skeptics said there was a lot of uncertainty as the three remaining state lockdowns halt approval on Thursday and close in 2023. Supervision of juvenile offenders will be shifted from the State Corrections Department to the California Health and Human Services Agency.
This change in mindset “has a lot of potential to be much more effective,” said Jessica Heldman, an expert on juvenile justice at the University of San Diego School of Law, “and of course, making communities safer” by addressing the needs of the people Identify and hit juvenile offenders so they can get better.
The state system has an eventful history, which is marked by suicides and brawls by prisoners. The shift to local control is the final step in a lengthy reform effort, partly fueled by class action lawsuits and incentives for counties to keep youth out of the state system.
The first facility for adolescents in need – the San Francisco Industrial School – was established by law in 1859. Two years later, Marysville State Reform School opened for boys ages 8 to 18, 10,000 teenagers.
The number of juvenile offenders has fallen to around 750. About 16% are serving for homicide, 37% for assault, one third for robbery, 9% for rape or other sexual offenses. A disproportionately high 59% are Hispanic and 29% are Black.
Previously, adolescents could be sent to the facilities as young as 12 and in some cases remain until the age of 25, although many will be transferred to adult prison when they are 18. New admissions are now being monitored by 58 probation authorities in the district.
Young people from the age of 14 who could have gone to a state facility earlier can instead be accommodated in “safe youth treatment facilities” in the district at the instruction of the juvenile judge.
That’s a disturbing replica of state lockdowns at the local level, said Meredith Desautels, an attorney at the San Francisco Youth Law Center.
“My biggest concern is that we will actually see teenagers who would never have gone to (government facilities) to spend more time in safe custody than they were before the closure,” she said.
The counties are determined to get the law up and running, said Larry Morse, legislative director of the California District Attorneys Association, but “frankly, the details are still a little opaque and we haven’t really been able to pinpoint exactly how this will play out. “
Prosecutors want to know where teenagers who commit “the most egregious and terrible crimes” are being held and how they are being helped, he said.
District officials fear that smaller districts may have difficulty providing special programs for young people who, for example, commit sex crimes or have serious mental health problems.
The state will send the counties $ 212 million annually to pay for their new responsibilities – about $ 225,000 per youth.
But the California State Association of Counties said the funding formula penalizes districts that rely the most on the state system and therefore need the most help developing local alternatives.
The district’s probation officers, meanwhile, will attempt to strike a balance between reform advocates’ focus on rehabilitation and juvenile judges who, at prosecutor’s request, could send 16- and 17-year-olds to adult detention centers for the most serious crimes.
Approximately 35,000 juvenile offenders are being treated in California’s counties, of whom more than 3,600 are being held in youth homes, camps and ranches. But when juvenile judges have faced the most recalcitrant or restless juveniles in the past, they have had the option of sending them to the state juvenile justice department.
“And then you would have a huge $ 200 million system for that one kid to develop the necessary case plan. That gave the court confidence it didn’t have to go to the adult system, ”said Karen Pank, Chief Probation Officers of California.
With that option gone, officials and lawyers alike are seeking advice from the emerging state youth and community recovery agency.
A consortium of 40 youth advocates recently asked lawmakers to budget $ 30 million for the office – four times what Governor Gavin Newsom last proposed – to ensure better oversight of all juvenile justice, not just juveniles, who previously came into state custody.
“There was mass confusion at the county level with very little state guidance,” said attorney Frankie Guzmán, director of the California Youth Justice Initiative at the National Center for Youth Law.
This has often resulted in probation agencies being at the top by default, while law enforcement agencies are suspicious in the eyes of many proponents, said Guzmán, who spent six years in California juvenile prisons for armed robbery.
Heldman warned that the state cannot simply absolve itself of responsibility for the youth it is now pushing back into the counties.
“This is what I call Pontius Pilate: the state washes its hands on these wards,” said Republican Senator Jim Nielsen, a former state probation officer, during a law change debate this spring.
But Democratic Senator María Elena Durazo promised that her budget subcommittee will oversee an orderly transition “so that all young people stay in our communities, rather than in youth prisons far from the resources and support they need to heal trauma and the course to change “their life.”
“This was a moment of hope,” Durazo said of lawmakers voting for the postponement. “It was also an acknowledgment that we had to get it right and it wasn’t going to be easy.”
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