LA County Supes Vote to Explore Idea of Splitting Probation in Two

At Tuesday’s LA County Supervisors’ meeting, the board voted 4-0 in favor of triggering a report to explore the idea of splitting the nation’s largest probation department into two separate agencies—juvenile and adult.

(Supervisor Mike Antonovich was not present, thus did not vote.)

The motion that was passed on Tuesday merely allowed the county CEO to hire an expert consultant to analyze “the logistics” of chopping the county’s sprawling and chronically troubled department in half—one for juveniles, the other to serve adults. Yet, judging by the statements made by the supervisors present, plus the thoughts put forth by the panel of juvenile advocates who were invited to speak to the issue during Tuesday’s discussion, it appears that breaking up probation is an idea that is gathering velocity.

Right now, Los Angeles has the nation’s largest probation department, with an annual budget of more than $840 million, 6,600 employees, and over 70,000 youth and adults who are either being monitored by the department, or are in one of probation’s residential placements, including such locked facilities as the county’s juvenile halls and camps.

By comparison—according to the motion co-authored by supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Mark Ridley-Thomas—the next largest probation department in California, is the San Diego County Probation Department, which has a budget and staff only one-fourth the size of LA’s department.

“We are at a critical moment in our criminal justice reform in LA County,” said Ridley-Thomas, as he introduced the motion. “After the development of the office of the Inspector General [for the LA County Sheriff’s Department], and the creation of the civilian oversight commission, now we have turned our full attention to the probation department.”

Sheila Kuehl, the motion’s co-author, agreed. “I think this exploration is going to be very important as we elevate the scrutiny of the probation department in a way that most other states and counties haven’t done,” she said.

Supervisor Don Knabe was also positive. “This is an issue I’ve been concerned about for a long time,” Knabe said. “So much of the emphasis when you hear what is going on in probation is… on the adults. I really don’t think it’s in the right place when it comes to the youth. I think we have a real opportunity here as it relates to dealing with the culture inside the department….”

Cal Remington, who is the interim chief of probation while the search is on to replace former chief Jerry Powers, was more circumspect than the supervisors. But he still appeared to be at least open to the idea.

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THE ADULTIFICATION OF THE JUVENILE SYSTEM

When the supervisors and Remington had finished, the panel of invited youth advocates spoke. The line-up included representatives from Homeboy Industries, Scott Budnick’s Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), Kim McGill from the Youth Justice Coalition, Javier Stauring from the Office of Restorative Justice, which provides pastors for the county’s various juvenile halls and camps…and more.

Panelists spoke about the damage done by what they described as the “adultification” of California’s juvenile systems.

“It is unclear to me,” said Javier Stauring, “why there was ever a need for scientific research to prove that children are different than adults, but nevertheless this is a fact that has finally has virtually unanimous consensus.

Another area of consensus among juvenile experts and advocates, said Stauring, “is the fact that there is a great need for a radical shift in the current culture of the probation department. If inside our halls and camps there is a culture that denies the inherent dignity and potential of every child, it doesn’t matter how many proven programs we research, and how good they look on paper,” he said, “it’s not going to make a difference inside.”

Patricia Soung, a senior staff attorney for the California Children’s Defense Fund described a boy whom she represented when he was 15-years-old, who had been in the county’s juvenile system since he was thirteen. At one point, Soung said, she had gathered a bunch of letters of support for the boy from different people who had “interfaced with him while he was incarcerated and before..describing his stength, his positive attributes” and his potential.

“I handed them to this client,” she said. “He read through them then he whispered to me, ‘See, I’m not all bad.’ That moment,” said Soung, “reflected to me something deeply disturbing and entrenched about his interactions with probation, that he had internalized.”

After the meeting, Cyn Yamashiro, who was one of the panelists, spoke to WLA about the proposal to split LA County probation. Yamashiro is now an attorney in private practice, and a two-time president of the Probation Commission. Previously, he was the founding executive director of Loyola Law School’s Center for Juvenile Law and Policy and, before that, a juvenile public defender. He said, he’d been mulling over the issue of dividing probation for a long time.

“It will be interesting to to see if the consultant can find a reason not to divide the department,” Yamashiro said. When researching the idea, Yamashiro said he’d found an array of reasons in favor of dividing the department. “But I honestly haven’t heard a single good reason for keeping it together.”

Like many of the other panelists, Yamashiro emphasized the pressing need to address what he and colleagues described as the problematic culture inside the county’s juvenile facilities, and the opportunity to address the issue presented by splitting the agency.

“The role of officers working in juvenile facilities is very different from that of officer working with adults,” he said. “Juvenile probation needs to recruit people who specifically want to do rehabilitative work with kids.” Instead, he said, too often the department has hired people who primarily want to be law enforcement officers, to whom the idea of rehabilitation is not part of the job. “These people have no business working with juveniles.”

We’ll continue to track the possibility of splitting probation as the matter unfolds.