California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the closure of the state’s youth justice system, the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), with the release of his revised state budget on Thursday. Shortly after taking office last year, he promised to “end the juvenile justice system as we know it.” His administration planned to remove DJJ from the management of the state’s prison system and place it in the health department.
David Muhammad
But now with the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc on the state budget, the crisis has turned into an opportunity. Newsom now plans to shutter the state system altogether, leaving it to the individual counties to house youth adjudicated for the most serious offenses.
No question this is a victory for youth justice advocates. It is just a very complicated victory fraught with potential pitfalls and unintended consequences.
DJJ, formerly known as the California Youth Authority (CYA), has a long history of scandal, horrible conditions, terrible outcomes and excessive spending. In the 1990s there were 10,000 youth incarcerated in the juvenile prisons with another nearly 10,000 youth in CYA’s parole system. Today the parole system no longer exists, having already been transferred to the counties, and there are less than 700 youth in the three remaining DJJ facilities. The state spends more than $300,000 every year for each youth.
From 1999-2004, I made the nearly two-hour drive from Oakland, Calif., to the then-four CYA facilities in Stockton, Calif., once or twice a week to facilitate cognitive behavioral therapy sessions with the youth and young adults. During that time, violence in CYA facilities was at its peak, five youth died in a single year, the recidivism rate was above 90%, and conditions in the facilities were harsh. An exposé series by the San Jose Mercury News, along with fierce advocacy, led to several counties placing a moratorium on sending youth to the state system.
Eventually a lawsuit resulted in a consent decree requiring a long list of court-ordered reforms. The California legislature also limited the youth who could be sent to the system to only those charged with serious and violent offenses. Despite the extraordinary downsizing and numerous reforms, DJJ remains a troubled system. If done right, its closure will be a victory for youth, their families and the community.
But simply handing the youth over to the county probation departments is not reason enough alone to celebrate. There are significant challenges ahead. Though youth enter DJJ for offenses committed prior to turning 18, they can remain in the juvenile facilities until their 25th birthday. The average length of stay in DJJ is two years. Although county facilities have far more capacity than needed to absorb the 600 to 700 youth in DJJ custody now, county juvenile halls currently hold youth up to 18 years old and are designed for short stays, between 20 to 35 days.
When I was the chief probation officer of Alameda County, I agreed with Gov. Jerry Brown when he called for DJJ’s closure in 2011. Back then, there were 35 youth from my county in the state system who I planned to house at a refurbished county camp. But today I agree with advocates that we should not waste precious resources, spending many millions on constructing new buildings to incarcerate youth.
Yet that does pose a dilemma. We have empty beds in county facilities, but they are designed for short-term stays and do not have the appropriate space for recreation, rehabilitation, treatment and vocational programming. The schools are run by the county offices of education, with varying quality across the state, but none equipped to teach 20-year-olds.
Then you take a place like Los Angeles County, the size of many countries, and in one sense it looks ideal to take its youth back from the state. It is the county with the most youth in DJJ, a county with several closed facilities that actually have programming space, and a county probation department with 6,000 employees and a $900 million budget. But it’s a county with such a long-troubled juvenile justice system that many in the field fear it would be worse than DJJ.
Counties need to develop high-quality transformative residential programs. Secure programs that hold youth for more than six months should be reserved for youth who have been adjudicated for serious offenses and who have been assessed as high risk. Without such an option, these are youth who would likely be charged as adults.
These programs must have a residential and therapeutic environment and not resemble a jail, as the juvenile halls in California do today. These programs must have quality education, including higher education, rehabilitation programming, treatment and therapy options, and vocational training. This will require appropriate resources not currently included in the governor’s budget.
While we celebrate a victory in youth justice reform amidst a global pandemic, we must also recognize the long road ahead to make this successful.
David Muhammad is the executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform and the former chief probation officer of Alameda County, Calif.
The counties are not equipped to work with these youth. These youth have already been to juvenile centers multiple times without success. DJJ has a successful sexual offender program, mental health program, addiction treatment and provides gang offender treatment. My nephew was able to obtain his diploma, get a forklift certificate and is now in college. Governor Newsom needs to be recalled and DJJ needs to stay open.
In response to everyone’s opinions not every KID sent to DJJ has a parent who didn’t do their part. My son was diagnosed with mental issues since he was 7 with numerous doctors. I always took the steps to get help, even to the extreme of hiring private advocates ( thousands of dollars)due to the fact that our school system fails these youth with requested testing and just moving them along. I agree some kids never had the support but since my son has been sent to DJJ I don’t even know him anymore. He’s become distant, constantly moody, he dropped his IEP for education. I’m hoping like many other states such as Missouri and Mississippi the programs they run will be what California can become. Rehabilitation and tax dollars put at work to improve our children’s life and protecting our community.
It’s hard to see everything DJJ does for these kids when your on the outside, but I agree that DJJ has saved many of these kids that are very gang entrenched and have no respect for authority when they first get to DJJ. I have seen kids that first arrive to DJJ. DJJ shows them how to be respectful, provides them with an education and mental services which most of them need severely. In my opinion closing DJJ is a big step backwards and I’m almost positive there’s going to be many lawsuits because the County will not be able to provide the services these kids need or the safety they get from DJJ.
Do I think it’s expensive to have them in a DJJ maybe, but I think it would be much more expensive if we don’t invest this money in our troubled youth and risk them being out in society committing more crimes and possibly murdering innocent victims. DJJ protects these troubled kids and protects all of us in society by not having them out on the streets until they are mentally ready.
I work with DJJ in another state and we are going down the same terrible path. What’s more troubling about these decisions is that they are led by people who’ve never worked in a prison, rarely step foot inside them or interact with the people who work there, and base all their information on a five minute conversation with a criminal who has spent their entire life manipulating people to get what they want. Our youth prisons have gone through such a drastic change with their policies and now the administration pretty much treats the staff as inmates and the youth as law abiding citizens. Confinement is completely gone so staff are assaulted multiple days out of the week and the youths favorite game is to expose themselves to females, and of course if a staff rightfully defends themselves they are usually locked out, fired, or arrested. These behaviors usually continue because consequences to these youth are a slap on the wrist, so administration has come up with these genius plans called intensive intervention plans, which is bribing kids with material items to get them to stop. Mental health has to respond to youth calls immediately now, so youth will say they are going to kill themselves regularly to get attention or whatever they are wanting. With all these policies in place and treating the youth like kings, lawyers with our consent decree have decided it’s still not good enough because the kids still act out (because there are no consequences) therefor it must be due to the traumatic effects of being in a prison so the only option is to close all youth prisons in the state. What people don’t understand about these small community residential facilities they want the youth to transition to, are that these kids have already been there and they either terrorized the staff, escaped, or the facility couldn’t manage the kids behavior. Youth aren’t just sent to prison. In my state it takes these youth an average of 10 serious offenses that range from getting caught with a gun, discharging a gun, and armed robbery before they finally end up in prison. You can do all the therapy and family/community building interventions you want but at the end of the day some youth and their parents DO NOT CARE and no one is about to force these people to care. We’ve even experimented with sending our kids to these residential facilities with no barbed wire fence and to no surprise they all escaped within a week and one was on the run for half of a year. Youth crime or crime in general isn’t decreasing people, lawmakers are just changing the laws and what constitutes as a violent crime to make it more difficult to arrest people and make it appear like crime is decreasing so they get reelected and keep their jobs.
LOL! CJCJ and other organizations have been visiting DJJ for many years. And they have been observing the treatment programs for the youth. Programs the state paid a lot of money for. And a lot of money was paid to train the staff. So these so called “watchdogs” have been observing the delivery of these programs. And now that the “watchdogs” understand the treatment programs, they’ve developed their “own” “treatment” programs. Now they are selling “their” program to the counties. Hmmm…sounds like a conflict of interest. Maybe this behavior would fall under plagiarism laws? Can you say copyright infringement?
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As a former Lieutenant (retired) from the California Youth Authority, now called DJJ! A Civilian or Clinician will never understand the concept of criminal justice system. These young men and women committed a crime under the penal codes: Robbery, Rape, Gang Related shooting, Murder, etc. CYA sworn Peace Officers, did not take these young men and women from their homes. Parents failed, their responsibilities to be a parent to these kids. CJCJ, and all youth advocates are promotes violence and no accountability.
But what is the background of these kids? Their history? Guaranteed that many of them, if not all have unresolved trauma and/or mental health issues. We need to be more humanistic and learn to be proactive as to restorative justice.
DJJ should be closed! Its basically a college training course for prison gangs. Youth don’t get to do well for themselves till the “prove themselves”. For everyone one success story there is 20 unfortunate ones. And with those success stories you dont hear about what they had to endure to get out. Stories so horrible , they probably choose to forget, just to get away.
As a practitioner, I have had an opportunity to work with juveniles, youthful offenders and adult prisoners. Removing DJJ facilities from state government is not the answer. Remember state government, failure is not an option.
I am in support of this closure. As a clinician who worked and received forensic training with this population, and went on to work with out-patient clients who are 290 registrants in the state. Some of these clients were 16 when they were sentenced to CYA and then transferred to the CDC. Altho I am in support of accountability for one’s actions, I do not believe that the way to rehabilitate theses juveniles is through the current system. The way of change is through education and therapeutic intervention management. A collaborative approach such as the containment model and psychoeducation would be a more effective approach.
I agree with you Danielle hibbitts I have a child currently in the process of going there and the stories I’ve heard I’m terrified for my son. I pray that he comes home alive 🙏
It’s unfortunate that CJCJ and other youth advocates like Books not Bars cheer the closing of DJJ, when DJJ has been a stabilizing factor for many at risk youth throughout California; without DJJ, may of these youth would be in State Prison doing hard time and becoming better criminals.
DJJ has shown growth and improvement in regards to the treatment of youth and development of their facilities to make the institutions look, feel and perform as treatment facilities for youthful offenders, over the past 10 years.
CJCJ only presents a one sided view of how DJJ/CYA was in the past and shares old facts and information, instead of looking objectively and reporting accurately at all the changes that DJJ has made.
CJCJ should look for and write about all the success stories of youth that have discharged from DJJ and have been successful in the communities by having a job, continuing with their education, mentoring other youth and giving back to their neighborhoods.
If CJCJ and Books not Bars would focus their energy, time, money and effort in helping these at risk youth get training, education and employment in their communities prior to the youth committing a crime, then the youth population in DJJ would be minimal and we would have less youth incarcerated in California.
Unfortunately, at this time, the Counties can’t handle these DJJ youth with all their challenges beginning with trauma, gangs to mental health issues.
DJJ is impossible to closed! Again, many have tried and DJJ is still standing. Proposal only, Senate has to approved, which they won’t! These kids are criminals
Some might be but you don’t know each ones story. You can’t stereotype and lock them all up. Sometimes it’s a failed system that lands them there. Maybe if we had more resources spent on the still formidable youth rather than the already set in their bad behavior adults we can prevent them from ending up here. Or maybe if us parents didn’t drop the ball and fail these kids they wouldn’t be there. But the youth system needs restructuring and more funds need to be spent on preventative measures and programs. Bring back the scared straight style programs more youth camps and actual therapy not interns practicing on the youth. More structured environments with strict rules and behavior modification. The programs they have in place now are trash and nonexistent they claim to be providing services yet nothing happens just lock lock up and more lock up. And the adult programs are everywhere so much resources wasted on adults instead of the youth that are still able to be redirected.
I really pray that they so not close these down. From what ive learned it has changed from years ago, its no longer violent like it used to be. They do have programs, jobs, certification programs, college, therapy groups in there today that teach these kids life skills, responsibility, give them self confidence and a trade. They are treated respectfully, have better living environments, are given opportunity to reach goals and given rewards for there their growth.
The county or local juvinile facilities do not have all that opportunity, they have limited jobs, no college programs (although they did end up allowing one to enroll for some online courses), and have almost daily fights there. They can only house you up to age 18, 19 if you have an attorney that will fight fir you to stay longer, but once you hit 19 you are moved to the adult facilities until your trial is over as they cannot house adults.
Not much to say about the adult side as they have nothing for the adult inmates. They are lucky to get out of there cells for an hour every other day. Now their stuck in a cell with and adult celli where he can be easily influenced, bullied, pressured and harmed. Rather than growing and changing, they are fed to the wolves, as I like to say. Very few will be strong enough mentally and emotionally to come out a better person.
These are our kids, our youth, someone’s son, daughter, brother, sister, mother father, THEY ARE NOT JUST CRIMINALS! Everyone makes mistakes, some worse than others, but that doesn’t mean you give up hope and throw away the key. There is always hope and with the proper guidance, support, and direction we can can give them a chance to rehabilitate. You never know, even your ADULT CRIMINALS can change. Never judge a book by its cover.
I really pray this does not happen! It will be devasting.
I agree with Director Muhammad, and would also point out that despite their failings, DJJ has some highly qualified and dedicated professionals working with the youth. I the short term, closing DJJ is a bit like throwing out the baby with the very dirty bath water. Rather than reducing ineffective incarceration practices, some counties will probably build expensive new facilities like they did when the state’s adult system reduced its population. This just transferred mass incarceration from the state to the county and caused some inmates to be housed in facilities that were even less appropriate than the state’s facilities.
It will certainly be unfortunate if this change ultimately causes the rate of incarceration to increase for youth, and/or if they are put into the adult system in increased numbers. My idea is for the State to continue to maintain a state-of-the-art facility that can keep youth out of the adult system and also provide effective treatment and other programming. Under my plan, the counties would have to pay the state for this service. The counties would bear the cost, but would not have to build new facilities. This money should not be invisible spending from the residents of the county, but done in a way so that they know the price of throwing their children into the “system” rather than practicing a more effective types of Transformative Justice. If they see the price tag, and feel the pain of the costs, maybe they would support less costly programs that are more evidence-based and victim centered.
Unfortunately, as a country, we generally tend not to use programs shown to reduce recidivism (and restore victims), but opt for more expensive incarceration options that are more harmful to society.