Facilities

in which the BSCC would participate in a joint “reconstruction strike team” designed to finally fix the county's long-troubled juvenile hall system.

But the board, fed up with L.A. County's repeated appearances before them over the past three years, was not swayed. Board members declared both Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, open for less than a year, and the Barry J. Nidorf Secure Youth Treatment Facility in Sylmar to be “unsuitable” to continue housing youths.

Such a determination starts a 60-day clock, in which the county must either bring the facilities up to the state's minimum standards or close indefinitely.

It's the exact same position the county found itself in last year when the BSCC ordered the closures of Central and Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Halls, minus the secure treatment unit, over similar concerns. The county, in response, scrambled to renovate and reopen Los Padrinos, previously closed in 2019, as a new home for the juveniles before the deadline elapsed in July.

This time, however, Los Angeles County does not have another Los Padrinos to fall back on and its various juvenile camps are too small to hold more than a fraction of the youth at Los Padrinos. The Probation Department did not respond to questions about what it will do in the event that Los Padrinos can't be fixed in time.

Los Angeles County, through a spokesperson, said the BSCC's decision “places the county in the position of continuing to triage rather than to press forward with the reforms underway to achieve lasting change.”

“We intend to use the 60-day regulatory window to take all necessary steps to meet the state's requirements,” the statement said. “We had hoped to have the BSCC's agreement on a joint strike force that could provide clarity around goals and how outcomes are measured. Though that request