juvenile camps

Although Los Angeles has released scores of youth offenders from its county-run juvenile halls and camps to prevent the grim march of the coronavirus, hundreds of young people charged with “non-serious or minor offenses” remain detained, according to recently filed court documents. 

An escalating pressure campaign that began with letters and public protests on behalf of hundreds of incarcerated youth in Los Angeles reached the highest court in California Tuesday – an appeal by advocates to save lives and prevent “devastating harm to young people in custody and their surrounding communities.”

Young people in California’s juvenile justice system were exposed to chemical agents like pepper spray more than 5,000 times over the course of three years, according to a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California.

According to a new poll released Wednesday by the California Endowment, a majority of California residents say they’d like to see all of the state’s juvenile incarceration facilities closed down. The survey comes at a time when counties are adapting to a significant downturn in youth crime and flagging numbers of young people incarcerated at juvenile camps, halls and ranches across the state.

A plan released by the Los Angeles County Probation Department this week calls for shuttering six of the county’s juvenile detention camps over the next two years. The proposal would also relocate girls currently housed in the other camps into the eagerly awaited Campus Kilpatrick facility, a move that drew the ire of some commissioners at today’s Los Angeles County Probation Commission meeting.

Nearly six years after he spent more than a month locked up in a juvenile hall in Los Angeles County, Francisco Martines vividly recalled the conditions in his cell. Inside the small concrete room at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, Calif.,

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will explore the possibility of remodeling one of its juvenile detention camps in order to emphasize a therapeutic model of rehabilitation. At its meeting today, the board asked Interim Chief Probation Officer Cal Remington, Los Angeles County Chief Executive Officer Sachi Hamai and the Department of Public Works to submit a report that would outline the costs of transforming Camp Joseph Scott into a place that “embodies a culture of care to enhance therapeutic opportunities for youth and improve their future.”