In Tuesday’s LA County Board of Supervisor’s meeting, the Sups will very likely approve another $7.9 million to help improve matters at the county’s troubled probation department.
The money is slated to go toward satisfying the agreement the board made with the Department of Justice in 2008 to improve conditions in probation’s various juvenile detention facilities, which were deemed to be violating the civil rights of the kids they served.
The $7.9 million is being requested in addition to an earlier allocation of $79 million earmarked for the same DOJ-related purpose. Unfortunately, as you might remember, the previous probation chief and his administration….misplaced that other chunk of funds—which amounted to more than one tenth of probation’s budget.
The agreement stemmed from a 2006 DOJ investigation into whether youth were “adequately protected from harm” at the Los Angeles County Probation camps.
The Department of Justice concluded that the kids in probation’s camps were not in fact being “adequately protected.”
Four years and much money later, the DOJ is still not one bit happy with what probation has accomplished, according to Monday’s memo to the Sups from Bill Fujioka, LA County’s Chief Executive Officer:
“On July 30, 2010, the County received a letter from DOJ expressing its dissatisfaction with the County’s progress in implementing the MOA [Memorandum of Agreement] for Probation Camps,” wrote Fujioka.
In should be noted that the Urban League and the National NAACP have both passed resolutions–in part at the urging of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas—each calling for a more rigorous form of federal intervention, likely in the form of a federal consent decree.
Rumor has it that, thus far, Eric Holder’s DOJ has been reluctant to take that step.
But behind the scenes, the pressure is not letting up from any quarter. And, from what I have seen, the disclosures about the ills of probation are far from over.