SAN DIEGO — Over the angry objections of community activists, the state Board of Corrections allocated $131 million Thursday to build or renovate juvenile jails throughout the state, the largest such expansion in decades.
The board, however, rejected funding for the project that activists found the most odious: a 210-bed juvenile hall in Alameda County. The board voted instead to give the money to a similar project in Sacramento.
Among the projects slated to receive money are a 20-bed expansion of a facility for girls in San Diego, a new 200-bed juvenile hall in the High Desert of San Bernardino County and a 240-bed expansion and parking lot at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey.
The Downey project was bitterly opposed by the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Activists argued that the money should instead be used for education, counseling and employment programs, particularly for minority youths.
"It is really a shame what we are doing to our children," said Javier Stauring, director of the archdiocese's juvenile detention ministry. "We need to move away from a primitive system that doesn't work."
But Thomas McConnell, executive director of the Board of Corrections, said that the state has fewer juvenile hall beds per capita than it did 20 years ago and that at least a dozen juvenile facilities run by county governments are so dilapidated that state and federal agencies are on the verge of citing them as unsafe.
"We don't disagree" with the protesters, McConnell said. "We know there has to be a balance between prevention and intervention. But we also know that there are some people who have to be in detention both for their safety and for society."
Los Angeles County probation chief Richard Shumsky called the $24-million appropriation for Los Padrinos "a tremendous step." The county, he said, is not attempting to increase the number of juveniles in detention.
"We hope that our [juvenile hall] population will be maintained and maybe even diminish, because we are trying to create new programs," he said. "But there will always be a base number of kids who have to be kept in juvenile hall. . . . We want that number to be housed in safe, adequate housing."
The San Bernardino County project, to be built north of Victorville, is meant to ease crowding at the county's 52-year-old main juvenile hall. The board approved $19.3 million toward an estimated price tag of $31 million; the county, which will make up the balance, hopes to complete the detention center by July 2004.
