Welcome end to youth prisons creates challenge for counties

California passes a huge public policy milestone this week: The end of abusive and expensive state-run youth prisons. What comes after holds huge potential but will require sustained effort to achieve.

Under Senate Bill 823 of 2020, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations' Division of Juvenile Justice is dissolved. Youth convicted of serious crimes, some up to age 25 and serving long sentences, will be sent to local county facilities. The overwhelming majority of these facilities were designed for children and teens in short-term stays.

This change in policy reflects a long-term goal for advocates: to get youth out of dangerous and damaging state facilities where abuse was flagrant, rehabilitative services were few, education was failing and costs were exorbitant (more than $400,000 per youth per year). Now many local juvenile probation departments are scrambling to assemble services, housing that is appropriate and adequate staffing.

The phrase that is applied most often is that agencies and their leadership are “trying to fly the plane while building it.”

Complicating the transition is the fact that oversight of countylevel juvenile halls is shifting from the independent Board of State and Community Corrections to the new Office of Community and Youth Restoration that is housed within the state's Department of Health and Human Services.

Under a new legislative bill, Assembly Bill 505, the OCYR would be vested with the power to award grants to counties, conduct investigations of conditions and develop minimum standards for facilities and staffing. The bill's author, Assemblyman Phil Ting, is to be lauded for bringing together a forwardthinking advocacy community. That community will be needed in the years ahead as the implementation happens in all 58 counties and adequate funding is sought from the state to pay for it.

Santa Clara County has a head start in putting together the policy infrastructure needed for this transition. Visionary Judge Katherine Lucero worked throughout her 20 years on the bench to strengthen collaboration with the county's probation department. She worked relentlessly with the board of supervisors to forge agreements with the Young Women's Freedom Center and the Vera Institute's Ending Girls Incarceration Initiative to provide services. Lucero now heads the OCYR. Under her leadership, California can become a model nationwide.

Yet the to-do list for our counties and the state is long: Integrating youth from the DJJ into existing and emerging county facilities, continuing to exercise strong oversight of failing and dangerous juvenile halls, and forging multicounty agreements to house and rehabilitate youth with complex needs. Counties and the state should also collect and analyze data on the needs of families in multiple systems, support action in under-resourced counties, and develop protective standards, staffing and community collaborations to carry out programs.

The state should reckon with the damage caused by state youth corrections, including youth and adults who “graduated” from the DJJ high schools without ever learning to read, were traumatized by abuse, or are addicted to drugs that they were exposed to at the DJJ.

Ahead lies the promise of a system that engages families, service providers, counties, courts and the state — one that is clear and intentional about rehabilitation and strong enough to cast off earlier imprinting of punitive models.

The overriding goal must be self-sufficiency and accountability for youth becoming adults and the development of public institutions — including education — that can help them find their way from custody to contributing members of the community. With a commitment to age and culturally appropriate services that follow proven gender and traumainformed models, we can achieve a better future.