JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORMS EXPLORED

County to revise policies, hire new probation officer and build new campus

San Diego County will revamp its juvenile probation system to reduce the number of incarcerated youths and provide more educational and social support to them, supervisors said at a hearing Tuesday morning.

Board of Supervisors Chairman

Nathan Fletcher convened the hearing to explore ways of expediting changes to the county juvenile justice system.

“It’s an opportunity for us as a board to step back and have a dedicated, focused conversations about the future of our probation department,” he said.

As part of that effort, the county is planning construction of a new juvenile justice campus that would include a home-like environment, outdoor space and intensive social services to replace the current, outdated facilities, built in the 1950s.

Officials also are recruiting a new chief probation officer with expertise working with adolescents. Supervisors plan to vet candidates with the help of a community panel and will vote on a final candidate in April, Supervisor Nora Vargas said.

Tuesday’s hearing brought national and local experts on juvenile justice together to review the practices shown to reduce repeat offenses and get youths back on track. That includes restorative justice, a process focused on repairing the harm caused by criminal behavior and bringing offenders back into productive roles in the community. And it involves trauma-informed care, which accounts for how a personal history of trauma influences people’s actions and experience.

Long-standing practices of incarceration and strict punishment for crime haven’t proven effective at either rehabilitating offenders or protecting the public, speakers told the board.

“The justice system is ineffective, harmful and excessively expensive,” said David Muhammad, National Director of Justice Programs at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

“It doesn’t work as it is designed to do, which is to reduce recidivism and improve public safety. Juvenile incarceration reduces high school completion and increases the likelihood of adult incarceration.”

He described the “traditional paradigm” of juvenile justice as a “deficit-based, punitive” approach and said that building on the strengths and assets of incarcerated youths yield better results. Probation

should be kept to a minimum, and focused on positive outcomes, he said. He recommended that authorities “Keep supervision length as short as necessary, reduce conditions of probation to only those directly tied to the youth’s goals of rehabilitation and development, (and) eliminate incarceration for technical violations,” such as missed or late probation appointments, or curfew violations.

Clinton Lacey, director of the District of Columbia Department of Youth Rehabilitation, said his department

has successfully worked with “credible messengers” — adult community members who act as guides for incarcerated youths and connect them with social services, education and employment opportunities.

Credible messengers help in “building the capacity of the villages that we all say it takes to raise a child,” he said.

Supervisors said those recommendations reinforced the county’s existing efforts to improve juvenile justice.

“All of your comments were music to my ears and my heart,” Vargas said.

Supervisor Joel Anderson said the practices that speakers described dovetail with evolving practices at the state and local level.

“I want to thank you for your hard work,” Anderson said. “I worked very hard in the state legislature on restorative justice.”

California plans to dismantle its Division of Juvenile Justice, after years of scandal and mistreatment of young offenders, and will close remaining juvenile prisons in July 2023.