State orders juvenile hall closures
Sylmar, Boyle Heights sites must be empty within 60 days; `pre-dispositioned youths' to go to Downey facility
A California regulatory board has ordered Los Angeles County to remove 275 youths from its troubled juvenile halls in Sylmar and Boyle Heights by the end of July.
The Board of State and Community Corrections voted Tuesday to declare the Barry J. Nidorf and Central juvenile halls “unsuitable.” Such a declaration gives the county 60 days to empty the halls of all “pre-disposition youths,” a category that covers juvenile detainees who have not been sentenced.
At the meeting, county officials asked the board to delay the decision and to instead give them 150 days to implement a plan to consolidate their staff and youths to a soon-to-be reopened Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, but the board members declined that option, saying the proposal was “too little, too late.”
The county promised sweeping reforms when the BSCC declared the same halls unsuitable more than a year ago and yet the facilities, which narrowly avoided a shutdown at that time, are now once again out of compliance, BSCC Chair Linda Penner said.
“I have heard this before from Los Angeles County, and I think the time has come to take an extraordinarily difficult move,” she said.
The BSCC originally met in April to determine the suitability of the halls and decided to delay the decision by a month. State inspectors revisited the halls in the interim to check the county's progress toward implementing its proposed corrective action plan, but they found that little progress had been made. Directors at the two facilities had not even seen the county's plan and the
facilities remained out of compliance in 18 different categories, according to a staff report.
`It is time'
Interim Chief Probation Officer Guillermo Viera Rosa expressed disappointment in the BSCC's decision in a statement, though he agreed that “it is time for the department to discontinue using these facilities for housing pre-disposition youth.”
“We are already executing a plan to transfer these youth, staff, programs and services to Los Padrinos by the deadline,” Viera Rosa said. “We also want to make clear that the BSCC's decision today will not result in the release of hundreds of youth, as some have erroneously alleged.
“As we look forward to the methodical and smooth transition to Los Padrinos, we will also continue working on the more complicated issues of staffing and culture within the department.”
Viera Rosa, a former BSCC member, was not present at Tuesday's meeting because of a prohibition against him appearing before his former board for at least a year. Margarita Perez, a former chief deputy probation officer, appeared in his stead, along with two other consultants hired to assist with the reforms.
Perez said crews are working at Los Padrinos 24 hours a day to prepare it before the deadline.
“We anticipate the majority of these upgrades will be completed within the next 30 to 45 days to allow us to meet the minimum BSCC compliance standards, with more expansive renovations to continue for a number of months,” Perez said.
Staffing at `breaking point'
Three unions representing the county probation's field deputies, supervisors and directors criticized the county's plan in a joint statement, saying it will not solve the department's ongoing staffing crisis. The issues at the two juvenile halls have been attributed to a lack of available staff, with the county now hoping to bring in reserve sheriff's deputies, interns and graduate students to relieve sworn employees from administrative duties.
BSCC inspectors earlier this year found that the staffing problems led to youths regularly missing school, not receiving outdoor time and having to urinate in their rooms overnight.
The remaining staff, meanwhile, work excessively long shifts to pick up the slack and face violence due to the lack of manpower. One L.A. County official described the crisis as a snowball effect, where employees are now calling out to avoid the risks caused by others not showing up.
“Officers assigned to the juvenile division are faced with daily youth-on-youth and youth-on-staff assaults and 40% of staff in the juvenile division are now out on injury leave,” said Hans Liang, president of the Deputy Probation Officers Union in a statement. “To make up for the staffing shortfalls, staff are being compelled to work 18to 24-hour shifts and have reached a breaking point, simply doing the best they can with limited resources and exhaustion.”
The unions said there are more than 1,000 vacancies in the Probation Department due to a hiring freeze.
“If we had the proper resources, primarily maintaining appropriate staffing levels, we could provide the programs the Board of Supervisors and BSCC are seeking, but we barely have enough staff to cover shifts,” said Regino Torres Jr., president of the Association of Probation Supervisors. “If staffing levels were restored, we could bring back the sports camps and other programming we know the juveniles in our care need.”
Changes in facility usage
Under Viera Rosa's proposal, the county hopes that consolidating the majority of its staff to one facility will help. Both Barry J. Nidorf and Central, even after the state closures, will be used for other purposes, according to the county. Central, in Boyle Heights, will serve as a law enforcement intake center and a medical hub for the other halls, while Nidrof, in Sylmar, will house a few dozen youths at its Secure Youth Treatment Facility, which serves youths who have been returned from the state's Division of Juvenile Justice.
Currently, BSCC does not have authority over such facilities, though Gov. Gavin Newsom has indicated in his budget that he wants to expand the board's power to include the youth treatment facility in the future, according to Penner.
If that happens, BSCC will reinspect Barry J. Nidorf to determine if it also is unsuitable to house SYTF, Penner said.
Death weighs on board member
Both the juvenile halls and the attached SYTF have struggled with an influx of illicit substances, particularly fentanyl, due to lax security, according to an inspector general's report. A male in the SYTF portion of Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, identified as Bryan Diaz, died from a suspected overdose in early May. The inspector general reported three nonfatal overdoses in one unit in March.
Scott Budnick, a BSCC board member who recused himself from Tuesday's decision, explained after the vote that he had served as a mentor to Diaz. Budnick, the founder of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, shared his experiences with Diaz, whom he described as being on a “real path of change” prior to his death.
“He was working hard to get from Barry J. Nidorf to Camp Kilpatrick,” Budnick said. “To see a coroner's van come to the facility and to see his body removed 16 hours later was a day I wish I'll never have to repeat ever again.”
Budnick, who visits the facility weekly, blamed the death on the county's poor management over the years. The youths wake up at 7 a.m. and sit in front of a tiny television all day long, he said. The juveniles told him that drugs helped make the monotonous days feel less long, he said.
“There's hundreds of emails that said someone is going to die in Unit X and nothing happened,” he said. “I would walk into that unit, and every week, it would be the exact same thing. They're not getting recreation, they're not going to school.”
One of the youths Budnick meets with is enrolled in college, but the Probation Department hasn't taken him to class in three months.
Budnick acknowledged that changes have been made since Viera Rosa took over. He is hopeful this time will be different.
“I want to throw my full support behind Chief Viera Rosa because we have to get this right, we have to, or there's going to be another Bryan Diaz,” he said.