Opinion: A Proposal to Transform California’s Juvenile Justice System, Confront Climate Change

The mammoth 85% decline in arrest rates of youths in California since 1995, along with the current coronavirus pandemic, have emptied California’s juvenile facilities. As of Aug. 8, just 2,800 people were incarcerated in state and local juvenile facilities, down from over 20,000 in 1995.

As the state moves forward, we can continue spending vast amounts on incarceration and probation. Or, as outlined previously, California can use this unique opportunity to reshape its juvenile justice system.

California can shift to a 21st-century model of small-scale, low-density facilities oriented toward education, job training and conservation employment for youths who the court determines must be in custody. California’s Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp in Amador County presents one such opportunity to support youth and address the state’s burgeoning environmental crises. 

State fire camp and local juvenile detention camp capacities

Source: CDCR Conservation (fire) camps; BSCC juvenile detention survey.

Currently, criminal justice interests are justifying maintaining their budgets by angling to take credit for the crime decline. (Note that until recently, these same groups had been misrepresenting youths as getting ever more violent and predatory.) 

However, the juvenile justice system, including arrest, incarceration and probation, cannot be shown to have caused or contributed to the 40-year drop in crime by youth – a point California’s state auditor recently affirmed. Once in the system, youths experience high rates of recidivism. 

Rather, the crime decline consists of youths never entering the system in the first place. California’s arrests of youth plunged from 1980 to 2019 — down 84% among ages 12-17 and 97% among ages under 12 — even as the age 10-17 population grew by 1.1 million. These trends show a reality often absent from the crime decline debate: Younger generations themselves deserve credit.

Pouring more money into traditional approaches to juvenile justice has not reduced crime nor prepared justice-involved youth for adulthood. It is time for new thinking that stands at the intersection of youth development and environmentalism for future generations. 

Proposed pilot program at conservation camp

Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed closing the state Division of Juvenile Justice in favor of local alternatives, and legislators involved in the state budget process have drafted a bill to do so responsibly. The draft bill proposes keeping Pine Grove open “through a state-local partnership, or other management arrangement” to “train justice-involved youth in wildland firefighting” and other skills leading to “gainful employment.”

Mike Males

Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp is currently operated by Juvenile Justice under the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). It’s a low-security camp with an 80-bed capacity that housed 71 males ages 18 to 24 at an estimated cost of $150,000 per youth  in fiscal year 2020-21. Like most fire and juvenile detention camps scattered among 28 counties in California, Pine Grove is a small-scale facility consisting of cabins or dormitories amenable to specialized programs and necessary health precautions.

Youths at Pine Grove contribute work to over 100 environmental projects and are afforded opportunities to complete high school and access post-secondary and college education. They produce goods such as cement tables and receive training in wildland firefighting from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE). 

We propose allocating $9 million from the General Fund in 2020-21, increasing to $13 million annually, to be awarded as a competitive grant by the Board of State and Community Corrections to local jurisdictions working jointly with the California Conservation Corps and CAL FIRE under the state’s Natural Resources Agency. 

Selena Teji

Although Pine Grove’s crews would work alongside civilian fire crews during hours of training and employment, secure housing and supervision would be required for in-custody firefighters. In-custody conservation camp workers would be paid the state minimum wage, $12 per hour in 2020. The creation of 40 to 60 salaried positions for young people in custody in a Pine Grove pilot program would cost approximately $25,000 annually per position, from which the costs of housing, custody supervision, insurance, training programs, food and personal supplies would be deducted. Reimbursements for work projects, as is now afforded conservation corps work, would offset some program costs. 

Youth and young adults in custody would be assigned to Pine Grove by application demonstrating amenability to the program’s benefits. Partnerships with local jurisdictions would diversify the camp’s current population with a broader array of young people working on common projects. Worksite contacts between diverse groups employed by the conservation corps has the potential to create healthier conditions than those in congregate institutions. Young people would emerge from their sentences with substantial earnings, onsite education and higher education grants, and job skills and certifications transferable to civilian employment.

The Pine Grove pilot program could provide insight into a sustainable pathway to meet the needs of climate change and deteriorating public resources. California has a burgeoning need for workers trained in environmental fields. There is also an unmet demand for employment opportunities among people who are or have been justice-involved. If the Pine Grove pilot program is successful, California could expand the model to other populations involved in the juvenile and adult justice systems. 

Mike Males is senior research fellow for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco. He is author of “Teenage Sex and Pregnancy: Modern Myths, Unsexy Realities.”

Selena Teji is an independent researcher with 10 years of experience analyzing criminal and juvenile justice policy and funding in the United States.