On Monday, an officer at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Corridor in Sylmar was stabbed. On Wednesday, the California Division of Justice requested a court docket to implement a 2021 settlement requiring L.A. County to repair “unlawful and unsafe situations” at Nidorf and Central Juvenile Corridor close to downtown Los Angeles, noting that situations had deteriorated because the settlement was signed. On Thursday, the Board of State and Neighborhood Corrections blundered badly by giving the county another probability to repair its perpetually inept juvenile probation operation (the county’s grownup probation program isn’t beneath scrutiny).
The county’s juvenile corridor disaster isn’t fixable. It didn’t start with the pandemic or with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s determination to shut the state’s juvenile justice program and switch youths to the counties. L.A. County progressively misplaced management of its juvenile probation operations over the past quarter-century due to a poisonous mixture of inconsistent management, poor labor agreements, competing juvenile justice ideologies and, paradoxically, each inattention and micromanagement from the Board of Supervisors. The issue could be traced via the tenures of a succession of chief probation officers — starting with the person for whom the Sylmar facility is known as.
Barry J. Nidorf stepped down as chief probation officer in 1997 after 13 years within the job. He was lauded for improvements which have since fallen into disrepute, together with establishing the county’s first paramilitary-style juvenile boot camps, which had been fashionable amid the Nineties panic over juvenile “super-predators.” The fears had been finally proved false, and boot-camp-style packages produced children who continued to reoffend at excessive charges after launch.
Nidorf was briefly succeeded by Walter Kelly. Throughout Kelly’s tenure, an audit discovered lax oversight and mismanagement, resulting in huge overspending on additional time, particularly within the juvenile halls. The probation managers union voted “no confidence” in him.
The board handed over Kelly for the everlasting place in favor of Richard Shumsky, who was elevated from deputy probation officer to govt assistant to chief probation officer inside a couple of months in 1998, a surprisingly sudden rise given his lack of administration expertise.
However Shumsky was the president of the deputies union, which had donated lavishly to the reelection campaigns of county supervisors. The union needed, and in the end bought, work schedules that allowed its members to spend lengthy stretches at residence between shifts and to be paid for spending nights off-duty at probation camps.
Throughout Shumsky’s tenure, the L.A. County grand jury discovered severely substandard situations at juvenile halls and camps, with amenities in dire want of restore and a faculty program unable to correctly educate probationers as required by legislation. The Justice Division’s civil rights division started investigating.
Shumsky was succeeded in 2005 by Paul Higa, who was anticipated to reinvigorate administration of the division however died after serving lower than a yr. He was changed by Robert Taylor. Below Taylor’s management, division administration failed to research expenses in a well timed method, permitting dozens of officers to flee self-discipline for abuse and different critical misconduct, together with extreme pressure and inappropriate sexual contact between employees and probationers at juvenile camps. Different personnel had been fired for theft, drunk driving and fraud. And the Justice Division opened a proper probe into unconstitutionally poor situations at juvenile halls and camps.
Taylor left in 2010 and the Board of Supervisors changed him with Calvin Remington, who served a couple of months earlier than Donald Blevins took excessive publish. He was employed partly to stop federal officers from taking the Probation Division into receivership by complying with a guidelines of enhancements. He succeeded, which looking back is a disgrace, as a result of it prevented the Justice Division from ordering main restructuring. Probation union members voted “no confidence” in Blevins’ management in July 2011, and he left a couple of months later.
The supervisors changed him with Jerry Powers, who imposed some long-needed self-discipline by firing some employees, denying promotion to others for misconduct and referring dozens accused of crimes for arrest.
The deputy probation officers union sued Powers however misplaced in court docket. However when Powers was compelled out in 2015, the Board of Supervisors introduced again Remington, who bought the union to drop its enchantment in change for reversing Powers’ promotion coverage, in order that seniority alone, somewhat than efficiency, would decide promotions.
After Remington left, the board employed Terri McDonald, and introduced in Sheila Mitchell to deal with the juvenile division somewhat than enable McDonald to make her personal choice.
McDonald retired on the finish of 2019 and the supervisors employed Ray Leyva as interim chief, then changed him in 2021 with Adolfo Gonzales. The board fired Gonzales on March 7, following a Occasions story on a video displaying a probation supervisor’s disturbing use of pressure towards a juvenile at a probation camp in Malibu.
The board has but to switch Gonzales. However earlier this month it created the brand new place of chief strategist for juvenile operations and employed state parole chief Guillermo Viera Rosa, at an annual wage of $320,000, to cope with the juvenile corridor disaster.
Since Nidorf left 26 years in the past, the typical tenure of chief probation officers has been roughly two years. Whereas some front-line officers brazenly yearn for the boot-camp model he dropped at L.A., the juvenile corridor that bears his title (in addition to Central Juvenile Corridor) has imposed untold injury on the youths housed there. The one place a juvenile, even one accused of committing against the law, must be protected from assault and be offered correct schooling, healthcare and remedy is in county custody. The county has as a substitute additional endangered the juveniles in its care and the employees who are supposed to defend them.
The county has had an almost infinite string of warnings and final possibilities. But it continues to be snarled in labor agreements that prioritize worker calls for as a substitute of the wants of the almost 400 juveniles in detention and hobbled by inconsistent management and oversight. It’s tragic that the Board of State and Neighborhood Corrections bought chilly ft and voted to maintain the halls open for a couple of extra weeks. The board ought to know by now that L.A. County’s juvenile probation operation is past restore.
