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L.A. County OKs steps to reform probation department



Los Angeles County supervisors have been in settlement Tuesday: The Probation Division is failing.

Many officers say they’re too traumatized to come back to work. Residing quarters for teens are decrepit and programming is sparse. The board simply ousted the newest division head — the ninth probation chief to come back and go in 20 years.

In a matter of months, a division beset by disaster might face its largest one but: a state-ordered shutdown of its juvenile halls by the California Board of State and Group Corrections. The unprecedented choice by state regulators might see the halls closed and the youths moved to juvenile detention amenities in different counties.

With a number of months left for a dramatic course correction, the Board of Supervisors unanimously handed three motions Tuesday geared toward overhauling the troubled division. The motions goal to decrease the variety of teenagers within the division’s care, discover appropriate locations to deal with younger offenders arriving within the county from the state’s youth prisons, and strengthen the Division of Youth Improvement — a brand new, rehabilitation-focused company that supervisors are desperate to see sooner or later exchange the Probation Division.

Supervisor Janice Hahn, co-author of one of many motions, stated she hoped the board’s actions would possibly “attempt to proper that ship.”

“We’re prepared to row in the identical path. However we’d like a ship that we are able to row, and, to date, it’s been riddled with holes and it appears to be sinking each single day,” Hahn stated. “We’re actually failing miserably.”

On this level, the board agreed. Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Lindsey Horvath, who co-wrote the motions on rising early releases and strengthening the Division of Youth Improvement, referred to as the circumstances “appalling” and “completely unacceptable.” Supervisor Hilda Solis stated she was “extraordinarily annoyed” and wished to see higher cooperation with probation unions.

With Tuesday’s vote, the board requested the chief probation officer, together with different county companies that play a task in juvenile justice, to work with the district lawyer to launch everybody from the halls and camps whom they feasibly can. In accordance with the movement, that would embody teenagers detained for a misdemeanor or probation violations and people who are anticipated to be launched within the subsequent two months.

“The division’s incapability to fulfill the minimal obligations to the younger individuals in its care is a painfully clear demonstration of the necessity to urgently depopulate the halls,” the movement says. “With only some months to realize full compliance, the division should critically think about a number of methods.”

County officers stated they weren’t clear how most of the roughly 466 individuals incarcerated within the division’s halls and camps might be safely launched. The district lawyer’s workplace stated in an announcement that it shares the board’s concern concerning the youth and can “work with our justice companions in creating protected launch plans for all those that are capable of be launched.”

AFSCME Native 685, which represents the county’s probation officers, accused the supervisors of taking over a task belonging to the judiciary. Jonathan Byrd, chief steward of the union, stated in an announcement that the vote amounted to “a direct assault on the separation of powers.”

The push to depopulate the halls and camps comes because the state sends extra younger offenders into the county’s care. As California dismantles its Division of Juvenile Justice, or DJJ, and sends the youths in prisons again to their house counties, Los Angeles County has struggled to accommodate the brand new arrivals who’re convicted of extra extreme crimes.

Some have been housed at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Corridor in Sylmar. One of many movements handed Tuesday goals to higher help these youth by rising staffing in these items and bolstering the programming. The movement additionally asks the Probation Division to provide you with a plan to cut back the inhabitants at Nidorf and think about briefly reopening Los Padrinos Juvenile Corridor, which closed in 2019.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger stated she and Horvath had taken a tour of Nidorf final month. She stated the go to had made it clear there was “no plan in place to obtain DJJ youth” nor an urgency to deal with the wants of the youth who have been already within the facility.

Barger stated she had discovered circumstances dismal. Teenagers threw stomach-churning breakfasts straight into the trash can. Youths have been sitting within the widespread space with nothing to do. One instructed her he wanted to finish his education to be launched. However nobody was exhibiting as much as train him.

“We’re paying for — I don’t know what,” Barger stated. “Backside line, one thing wants to alter.”

Time is operating out as the specter of a state-ordered shutdown of the 2 juvenile halls looms over the county. The California Board of State and Group Corrections, an 11-year-old state company that conducts inspections of grownup and juvenile detention amenities, just lately discovered 39 areas of noncompliance throughout the 2 juvenile halls. The failings run the gamut, a lot of them ongoing issues from current inspections — youth confined of their rooms for too lengthy, youth not given sufficient time outside, employees untrained within the present use-of-force coverage.

The state regulators are anticipated to resolve at a gathering this spring whether or not to close the halls down if the board can’t repair all 39 points and are available into compliance. The board will meet in April and once more in mid-June.

Such an order would deliver the probation division into uncharted waters.

“The BSCC has by no means ordered a facility to be vacated,” Tracie Cone, a spokesperson for the Board of State and Group Correction, wrote in an e mail. “Often counties repair their deficiencies.”

It’s not clear the place the youths would go. County officers appeared braced for the worst, writing in Tuesday’s board movement on depopulating the camps that the “younger individuals within the division’s care might pay the worst value of this potential order, together with out-of-county placements and transfers to the grownup system.”

Cone stated it will be as much as the county to resolve the place the youth would go, although she stated state regulation bars the county from transferring youth to a facility for adults.


The issues mentioned Tuesday have been acquainted to Adrian Reynosa, who was launched from Nidorf in December after two years contained in the troubled facility. He stated his education was spotty as a result of staffing issues, his meals was largely inedible, and actions have been few and much between.

“After all, they’re gonna say that everybody is preventing and doing this and that,” he stated. “However finally, what’s there to do?”

After watching Tuesday’s assembly, Reynosa stated he was uncertain if the motions amounted to the turning level they have been being framed as.

He’d heard these guarantees earlier than.

“Probation there stated they have been going to take action a lot issues for us. They’re going to make the staffing higher, the meals higher, this and that,” he stated. “It’s nonetheless the identical.”

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