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State will return juvenile |
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Friday, 21 March 2008 |
By Stacey Powells
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
“Except for those juveniles who are found to have committed serious and violent felonies, the California Youth Authority (CYA), which is now called the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), is returning juveniles to their county of residency for handling within the current county juvenile probation programs,” said Beverlee Bryant, Chief Probation Officer for Mono County.
Bryant spoke before the Mono County Board of Supervisors Tuesday, March 11. She said the practice of turning juveniles over to counties rather than state facilities has been in the works for quite some time. “Through the years the juvenile prison population has steadily dropped once the state started pumping more money into juvenile probation programs,” Bryant said. “There were 11,000 juveniles in the California Youth Authority seven years ago, but it has dropped to around 3,000 because the state put grant money into local juvenile probation.” Local programs for youths include implementing a number of prevention programs and local treatment programs trying to keep juveniles out of the state facilities.
Lawsuits were filed by several private law firms who worked with the Prison Law Office, a firm that has been in the forefront of legal efforts to enforce the Constitution and other laws inside the walls of California's prisons, citing that the state failed to provide programming for incarcerated juveniles. “They were just housing these juveniles and not doing anything to rehabilitate them. Change needed to happen, so the state stopped taking the kids and now they are retained locally.”
Some of the larger counties are struggling with what to do with juveniles who are returned to them, but so far Mono County doesn't have the same issues as Los Angeles or San Diego. “We have not received any juveniles back because in the past 10 years we only sent one to California Youth Authority (now Department of Juvenile Justice). When he finished his term he was deported,” Bryant said.
In the future, if Mono County finds itself struggling with what to do with juveniles who can't be incarcerated within the state system, Mono County will do what it always does, Bryant said. “If we had them then we would have to figure out if we would release them under community supervision, send them to juvenile hall or locate a boy's camp in another county with an available bed. We would figure it out and make sure they were somewhere safe.”
With the restriction of those eligible for housing in a state facility and the requirement that they remain at the local level, the State legislation authorized, under the Youthful Offender Block Grant, a way to provide counties with funds to detain, treat and supervise those youth who would previously be sent to the Juvenile Justice Department.
Mono County qualified for the minimum level of funding of $58,500. A plan for the use of the funds was sent Jan. 1 to the Corrections Standards Authority. Of that amount, $2,000 is to be used to implement a risk/needs assessment tool to assist in identifying the needs of minors; $10,000 will be used to pay for the purchase of secure beds for those needing to be detained in a local facility and the rest, $46,500; will be used to offset the salary of a probation officer providing the supervision of the youths in this new population.
“Since this has happened we have one young man who is sitting in Juvenile Hall so we will be using some of that money to pay for his juvenile hall commitment until his sentencing,” Bryant said.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 28 March 2008 )
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