GPS rules send juveniles into jail cycle

LOS ANGELES — An attempt to keep California juvenile offenders out of detention centers has thrust them into a system with differing and overly strict rules that send many back behind bars for minor violations, according to a report released Wednesday.

Rules for juveniles who are sentenced to wear GPS ankle monitors are “unrealistically onerous” and “undermine the rehabilitative purpose of the juvenile justice system,” said researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the East Bay Community Law Center in a report .

After juveniles are accused of crimes, a judge can choose to sentence them to juvenile detention or require them to wear GPS ankle monitor and abide by a set of rules set by probation officials. Because there are no statewide policies in place, it is left to individual counties to establish the rules for juvenile probationers.

In Northern California’s Lassen County, juveniles are required to follow a set of 56 rules, but in San Francisco County, they are only subject to 10 rules, according to the report. The rules also vary from county to county.

“People in one county didn’t even know what the county next door’s policies were,” said Catherine Crump, an assistant clinical professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

It is difficult to determine how the rules in California counties compare across the U.S. because in other large states, including Florida and Texas, the rules also vary from county to county, said Laura Abrams, who chairs the social welfare department at the University of California, Los Angeles.