California passes an enormous public coverage milestone this week: the top of abusive and costly state-run youth prisons. What comes after holds enormous potential however would require sustained effort to attain.
Beneath Senate Invoice 823 of 2020, the California Division of Corrections and Rehabilitations’ Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) is dissolved. Youth convicted of significant crimes, some as much as age 25 and serving lengthy sentences, will probably be despatched to native county amenities. The overwhelming majority of those amenities had been designed for youngsters and teenagers in short-term stays.
This variation in coverage displays a long-term purpose for advocates: to get youth out of harmful and damaging state amenities the place abuse was flagrant, rehabilitative providers had been few, schooling was failing, and prices had been exorbitant (greater than $400,000 per youth per 12 months). Now many native juvenile probation departments are scrambling to assemble providers, housing that’s acceptable, and sufficient staffing.
The phrase that’s utilized most frequently is that companies and their management are “making an attempt to fly the airplane whereas constructing it.”
Complicating the transition is the truth that oversight of county-level juvenile halls is shifting from the unbiased Board of State and Group Corrections (BSCC) to the brand new Workplace of Group and Youth Restoration (OCYR) that’s housed inside the state’s Division of Well being and Human Providers.
Beneath a brand new legislative invoice, AB 505, the OCYR could be vested with the ability to award grants to counties, conduct investigations of situations and develop minimal requirements for amenities and staffing. The invoice’s creator, Assemblyman Phil Ting, is to be lauded for bringing collectively a forward-thinking advocacy group. That group will probably be wanted within the years forward because the implementation occurs in all 58 counties and sufficient funding is sought from the state to pay for it.
Santa Clara County has a head begin in placing collectively the coverage infrastructure wanted for this transition. Visionary Choose Katherine Lucero labored all through her 20 years on the bench to strengthen collaboration with the county’s probation division. She labored relentlessly with the board of supervisors to forge agreements with the Younger Girls’s Freedom Middle and the Vera Institute’s Ending Ladies Incarceration Initiative to offer providers. Lucero now heads the Workplace of Group and Youth Restoration (OCYR). Beneath her management, California can change into a mannequin nationwide.
But the to-do listing for our counties and the state is lengthy: integrating youth from the DJJ into present and rising county amenities, persevering with to train robust oversight of failing and harmful juvenile halls, and forging multi-county agreements to accommodate and rehabilitate youth with advanced wants. Counties and the state also needs to gather and analyze information on the wants of households in a number of methods, assist motion in under-resourced counties, and develop protecting requirements, staffing and group collaborations to hold out packages.
The state ought to reckon with the injury attributable to state youth corrections, together with youth and adults who “graduated” from the DJJ excessive faculties with out ever studying to learn, had been traumatized by abuse, or are hooked on medicine that they had been uncovered to on the DJJ.
Forward lies the promise of a system that engages households, service suppliers, counties, courts and the state — one that’s clear and intentional about rehabilitation and powerful sufficient to solid off earlier imprinting of punitive fashions.
The overriding purpose should be self-sufficiency and accountability for youth changing into adults and the event of public establishments — together with schooling — that may assist them discover their manner from custody to contributing members of the group. With a dedication to age and culturally acceptable providers that observe confirmed gender and trauma-informed fashions, we will obtain a greater future.
Sally Lieber is a former state Assemblymember who authored early laws to disband the Division of Juvenile Justice. She now serves on the state Board of Equalization.
