Editorial: Sexual assaults, probation’s meltdown and L.A. County governance are connected
Beneath a proposal that goes earlier than the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, reserve sheriff‘s deputies would assist workers the county’s two chaotic juvenile halls, a 3rd corridor would reopen, and the county chief govt officer would have emergency powers to take further actions to save lots of the foundering Probation Division.
The ten-page plan by county CEO Fesia Davenport was unveiled after shut of enterprise Friday, lower than two weeks earlier than a Might 9 court docket listening to on a lawsuit by the California Division of Justice to compel the county to adjust to a 2021 settlement settlement over the abysmal circumstances on the juvenile halls. Shortly thereafter will come a state board’s choice on whether or not to shut the county’s two juvenile halls, and the closure of the state’s juvenile justice program, returning lots of of youths convicted of great crimes to their house counties.
At first blush it may not appear that the sweeping measure to maintain juvenile halls working has a lot to do with an earthly topic such because the construction and administration practices of the Board of Supervisors. Or the stunning revelation that the county is likely to be on the hook for as much as $3 billion in damages to lots of of people that allegedly had been molested as youngsters over the course of a number of many years whereas they had been dwelling instantly beneath county safety and supervision.
However in reality these items are intimately associated.
The alleged sexual abuse occurred at juvenile halls, probation camps, foster properties and MacLaren Youngsters’s Heart, an El Monte facility for youngsters faraway from their properties by the county Division of Youngsters and Household Providers. Studies of psychological, bodily and sexual abuse at MacLaren had been so rampant, legal responsibility was doubtlessly so nice and efforts to appropriate the issues had been so ineffectual that the county closed it 20 years in the past after a class-action lawsuit.
Related allegations of sexual and different abuse dogged the juvenile halls, which home youths accused of crimes earlier than adjudication, and camps, the place some juveniles are sentenced to stay for a number of weeks or months. However most remained open till caseloads dropped.
The Board of Supervisors has lengthy struggled to seek out one of the best ways to handle its most crisis-ridden operations, together with the Probation Division and DCFS. In most different counties, supervisors don’t intrude with division operations. In L.A. County, critics cost that supervisors trigger intractable issues by meddling, micromanaging and barging by means of the chain of command. The supervisors repeatedly specific their perception that the 2 departments, and the youngsters they’re supposed to assist, are too necessary to depart to underlings.
After a earlier county chief govt officer retired in 2007, the board might discover nobody to take the job due to its popularity for interference. It employed a brand new CEO that yr solely after agreeing to butt out of division affairs and persist with oversight and policymaking.
However the board chafed at its extra restricted position and retook direct management of Probation and DCFS in 2011, and later all departments.
For Probation, at the very least, the brand new/previous association has gone poorly. Davenport’s proposal would now put her extra firmly accountable for juvenile probation because the division faces an existential emergency.
Much less board meddling and extra govt emergency powers might nicely have been a part of an efficient prescription had it come ahead in recent times. Now, although, with state companies respiratory down the supervisors’ necks, it’s most likely too late.
The Justice Division and the state corrections board ought to look past these last-minute fixes and do not forget that there are lots of of individuals alleging county mistreatment reaching again into the Nineteen Seventies. Even when previous micromanaging by the Board of Supervisors led to the chaos that abetted the mismanagement and accidents, and even when Davenport’s proposal would curtail it, the county will proceed to have labor contracts that put the pursuits of workers earlier than juveniles, and an entrenched division tradition which will take years to appropriate.
Earlier this yr, after some haggling, the supervisors agreed to hunt an evaluation of its governance and administration practices and proposals for enchancment. That’s an excellent transfer, however will probably be August earlier than the board even considers potential contractors to undertake the examine. If solely the board had moved with the identical swiftness on its governance drawback as it’s now attempting to do with its pricey juvenile justice disaster.
