Reforming Reform: The Future of Juvenile Justice in California

McKenzie Jackson | Impact Alameda

For Samuel Brown, co-founder of the Anti-Violence Safety and Accountability Project and his wife, Jamilia Land, who is also an activist, criminal justice reform in the Golden State does not involve locking away youth offenders and tossing away the key.

“The answer is not putting them inside a baby jail preparing them for an adult jail,” said Brown, who was imprisoned for two decades beginning at 19 years old.

“The answer is to get them into a program that allows them to speak, talk about what they are going through, to participate in activities that are not available in their immediate surroundings,” Brown continued. “By doing that, we teach them social-emotional learning and plant seeds of pro-social behavior and change their course. We need an entirely new approach to how we deal with criminality.”

California’s newly formed Office of Youth and Community Restoration (OYCR) focuses its programs more on rehabilitating young people than punishing them.

The OYCR, a division of the California Health & Human Services Agency (CalHHA), was created as part of the state’s overhaul of the juvenile justice system, which will close three of California’s four juvenile justice facilities by July 2023. Instead, it will provide rehabilitation services to incarcerated youth ages 13 to 25 at facilities in their home counties.

OYCR, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, CalHHA’s secretary, hopes to give imprisoned youths the best chance to be successful in their community.

“This is a total reform here,” he remarked. “In truth, a juvenile justice record is often a fast track into the adult justice system, which is one of the deadliest systems you can be in. We know this is an issue that plagues Brown and Black communities,” he said. “The need for a reformed approach in the way we are talking about is needed. Treating young people as juvenile offenders doesn’t pay out in the long run.”

The reformed approach Ghaly envisions features young people that are jailed for low-level crimes enrolled in substance-abuse services, programs aimed at developing their vocational or other interests, and offering social work or counseling services readily available to help the youths and their families.

“The key is to be developmentally focused,” Ghaly said. “To create programs that support the emotional, social, and health well-being of young people so they can thrive. This starts with developmentally focused, trauma-informed services.

It is meaningful services around education, vocation, and job support. It means family engagement. Restoration. Rehabilitation. Not in the old sense of the way we had rehab for a broken convict,” he said. “It’s something that says young people are still in the process of developing their brain, developing their choices, developing their understanding of the world, and how they fit into it.”

The changed juvenile justice approach comes in the wake of a national movement to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system after an era of mass incarceration.

California and other states are now moving to cut inmate populations and shutter some prisons. Two bills signed into law last year — Senate Bill (SB) 823 and SB 92 – are among initial steps in California’s rehauling of how it handles locking up teens and young adults.

There are approximately 650 inmates, over 80 percent Black and Latino, in the four state facilities for young people run by California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Division of Juvenile Justice: N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility (YCF) and O.H. Close YCF in Stockton, Ventura YCF in Camarillo, and Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp in Pine Grove.

The bill set in motion a realignment for the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). The agency stopped accepting new juvenile offenders last June and set a closure date of June 30, 2023, for three DJJ jails.

Pine Grove will remain open to train eligible youth in wildland firefighting skills. By the end of June 2023, the other youths will be transferred to facilitates run by the counties where they are residents.

Last year, the coronavirus pandemic delayed the transfer of youths from state to county facilities, but the moves are expected to begin this year.

Ghaly said the pandemic slowed everything down including the hiring of people for positions to get programs running but noted OYCR has received action plans from all 58 California counties on how they will provide housing and rehabilitation services to youth offenders.

The OYCR’s new director, former Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Katherine Lucero, was hired in December.

“I think she is going to be really tremendous,” Ghaly said of Lucero. “If we hadn’t had the pandemic, it might have happened six or eight months ago, but these are things you don’t want to rush. This is such important work. Right now, there is still a lot of work at the community and county level to make sure we have the facilities, the programs, the staff to be able to serve young people.”

The Board of State and Community Corrections earmarked $9.6 million in funds for the Regional Youth Programs and Facilities Grant Program provided by SB 823 to help counties with infrastructure-related needs and improvements in preparation for the transfer of the youth inmates.

More dollars are needed, though. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed 2022-23 budget includes a $100 million one-time general fund for grants given out by the BSCC to support the improvements counties need to make sure their facilities can be “conducive to serving justice-involved youth with a wide range of needs, with a focus on supporting trauma-informed care, restorative justice, and rehabilitative programming,” the budget summary reads.

Ghaly said OYCR’s next steps involve sending more funds to counties including $20 million allocated for technical assistance and support after his department reviews and responds to the jurisdictions’ proposals. He said advocates and government officials are eager to see big strides made in restructuring the state’s juvenile justice system because “real lives are attached to the delays.”

“These are young people not receiving the program we have a vision for,” said Ghaly adding that there is cautious optimism. “We can deliver for these young people. I’m excited about where we are heading.”

Brown, the criminal justice reform advocate, hopes any programs put in place have adequate funding to help incarcerated youth turn their lives around.

“A perfect juvenile justice system is one where – when a child comes in contact with law enforcement, instead of putting them in the system and giving them felonies and records, we take them, assess their needs, put them in the programs they need, and redirect their life,” Brown emphasized.