Juvenile Institutions

While an Orange County facility that cares for abused and neglected children provides spacious cottage-like facilities and roughly four staffers per child, conditions at county juvenile hall are far more bleak, with a shortage of beds and waiting lists for basic programs, according to a grand jury report released Tuesday. "It's almost like you are comparing an area of barracks to Beverly Hills," said grand jury foreman Jim Perez.

Three years after state officials promised to fix California's troubled juvenile prisons, advocates for incarcerated youths are urging a judge to appoint a receiver to take over a system they say remains tragically broken. The plea came in a filing last week from lawyers who had settled with the state after suing to transform institutions they said treated children as hardened criminals without regard for their welfare.

A San Francisco judge on Wednesday ordered the state to adhere to strict standards in monitoring county juvenile halls across California, ending a lawsuit over what lawyers said were deplorable conditions in some institutions. The order by Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Mahoney effectively requires the Corrections Standards Authority -- the agency responsible for monitoring juvenile halls -- to comply with existing law that advocates for juvenile offenders said had not been enforced.

Threatened by a federal lawsuit over dangerous conditions at Los Angeles County's juvenile probation camps, county supervisors said Tuesday that they will hire a team of independent monitors to improve safety at the 19 facilities. "The county finally conceded it needed to address issues in the camps," Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. "The Department of Justice forced probation's hand."

An 18-year-old incarcerated at a Los Angeles County juvenile probation camp suffered a serious neck injury earlier this month in a racially motivated attack that took place the day after a scathing federal report criticized unsafe conditions in the facilities, probation officials said Friday. Details of the Nov. 1 attack at Camp Fred C.

Students held at Camp Joseph Scott, one of 19 juvenile probation camps in Los Angeles County, are some of the toughest to teach. Locked in classrooms behind 12-foot fences topped with razor wire, many of the girls sport tattoos with the emblems of some of the region's most infamous gangs. Although most are high-school students, on average they read at a fourth-grade level and have fifth-grade math skills. Karen Berns has taught math there for 15 years. Over time, she learned to be vigilant.

In a move to improve mental healthcare in the troubled juvenile justice system, Los Angeles County probation officials are asking that a 70-bed hospital in Sylmar be built to house and treat the most seriously ill youths in custody. The facility, which would cost an estimated $5 million to $10 million, would make it possible to transfer incarcerated juveniles now held in 24-hour isolation into a clinical setting, said Probation Chief Robert Taylor.

Two years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stood inside one of California's most violent youth prisons and pledged to turn the state's disgraced correctional system for the young into a national model. To reach that goal, the governor now wants to radically shrink the population, shipping about half the state's inmates to county lockups. That provocative policy shift, which must be approved by the Legislature, was unveiled as part of the governor's budget last week. Details are sketchy.

As Los Angeles County labors to turn its ailing juvenile detention department around, and as federal officials launched an inspection of probation camps Monday, officials expressed concerns over the governor's proposal to shift up to half the young offenders in state custody back to counties. Los Angeles' probation system of roughly 4,000 minors in three juvenile halls and 19 camps has been plagued by violence among youths and inadequate staffing.

Attempts to improve conditions at the county's juvenile halls made little progress last month while problems in at least two areas actually worsened, according to a report issued Friday. The report by the county auditor-controller found that probation officials failed to make headway in complying with 25 of 52 improvements called for by the U.S. Department of Justice. The report noted reduced compliance in youth hygiene and counseling services.