Probation Moving Incarcerated Kids Out of “Unsuitable” Juvenile Hall After Court Approval, But Oversight Commission Says Simply Relocating Kids Won’t Solve Root Problems

The Los Angeles County Probation Department began moving kids between youth lockups this week, as part of a plan to reduce the population inside Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall. Living conditions in Los Padrinos are so bad that the Board of State and Community Corrections declared it uninhabitable, and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza ordered the county to come up with a plan to close the facility.

County Probation officials say they will move more than 100 of the approximately 270 kids in “LP” as the facility is known for short, into other camps and halls over the next 30 days. This is a far more conservative plan than the corrective actions community groups requested, and what the county’s Probation Oversight Commission recommended. 

Not fit for youth

For those unfamiliar with the backstory, the LA County Probation Department has a decades-long history of the young people in its custody being subjected to critical deficiencies in safety, sanitation, health care, schooling, and programming. Youth in various facilities have overdosed on fentanyl, one of them fatally. They have also been sexually assaulted and experienced other disturbing forms of physical violence in Probation’s care. 

It is also far from the first time one or more of LA’s juvenile halls has been declared uninhabitable. In October 2024, the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) told LA County officials that the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall was unsuitable for incarcerated youth to inhabit. The LA County Board of Supervisors ignored the BSCC’s 60-day deadline to correct conditions in the hall, and instead blamed the BSCC for issuing the poor rating. 

Meanwhile, Probation was developing a “Global Plan” to reorganize where groups of youth should be incarcerated. This plan, requested by the county supervisors in March 2023, was meant to address the substandard care in the halls and camps, as well as to adjust for an influx of kids from the state’s youth prison system — then in the process of permanently shutting down. 

When LA County Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa unveiled the plan in February and March 2025, it was not well-received by the Probation Oversight Commission, the county supervisors, or the community, all of whom felt that Viera Rosa should have sought their input on the plan, as well as input from relevant county departments, service providers, and others.

Pressure builds

On April 10, 2025, the BSCC re-stated that Los Padrinos was unsuitable for youth. Eight days later, on April 18, LA Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza ordered the Probation Department to report back to the court by May 2, with plans and a timeline for transferring youth out of LP to other facilities.

In a public statement responding to Judge Espinoza’s order, the Probation Department said it would speed up depopulation of Los Padrinos using the Global Plan. 

Days later, on April 24, the LA County Probation Oversight Commission approved a list of recommendations for depopulating the facility, which included proposed alternatives to parts of the Global Plan. The recommendations included the prioritization of returning kids to their communities, using at-home detention for some. The commission noted that by the Probation Department’s calculations, approximately 60 youth incarcerated at LP might be eligible for house arrest. “According to the County’s own Los Angeles Detention Screener (LADS), many detained youth score within the range of low to moderate risk. This includes over half of those facing the most serious charges,” the commission wrote. “Some youth” with a risk score of zero are held for months — far beyond the national average of 27 days — ”before trial or adjudication.” 

The oversight commission recommendations also challenge a particularly controversial part of the Global Plan through which girls and gender-expansive youth held at Los Padrinos and the Dorothy Kirby Center would be moved to Campus Kilpatrick, a facility built for boys and young men. Those boys currently at Kilpatrick would be sent to the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, which has repeatedly been found to be dangerous. 

According to the commission, the Probation Department should instead house most girls and gender-expansive kids in Dorothy Kirby which has the room, and “currently provides the most therapeutic, homelike environment in the county.” The commission also calls on the Probation department to reduce the population of girls in Los Padrinos by one-third — approximately ten kids — by releasing them using partnerships with the juvenile court and the department of Children and Family Services, as well as strategies learned through its work with the Vera Institute of Justice.

(It’s also worth noting that the LA County Supervisors voted in 2018 and again in 2023 to decarcerate girls and gender expansive youth.)

Setting aside the commission’s recommendations, on May 2, Probation submitted its plan to reduce the LP population by more than 100 kids in 30 days. 

“This is a responsible and thoughtful step forward that reflects our commitment to court compliance, operational reform, and youth rehabilitation,” Chief Viera Rosa said. “While this is not a final plan, it represents a strong foundation to realign youth with the right programs and services — and do so in a way that brings lasting, systemwide improvements.” Viera Rosa emphasized the importance of a “measured approach — one that avoids the release of youth and supports a safe and orderly transition to other youth facilities.”

On May 6, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to direct the Probation Department to report back to the oversight commission on May 8, regarding which of the commission’s recommendations were already being implemented, which will be put into action in the future, and which the department will not implement and why. 

“While the Probation Department has made it clear that moving youth to other facilities will be the primary strategy the department plans to employ to depopulate Los Padrinos, there is an opportunity for the Department to do more,” Supervisors Janice Hahn and Lindsey Horvath wrote in their motion. While some movement of youth from Los Padrinos to other Probation-run facilities is necessary and inevitable, the Department should also do what it can to release youth to community,” including on ankle monitors “if it has been determined by the Courts that it is safe to do so.”  

At the May 16 hearing, Judge Espinoza approved Probation Chief Viera Rosa’s plan, with the caveat that he would order the juvenile hall closed if living conditions didn’t get better inside LP as a result of the chief’s plan.

Before the hearing, the Probation Oversight Commission also submitted its recommendations for getting kids out of Los Padrinos. The judge adopted one of the commission’s recommendations on the spot, agreeing that Probation should evaluate the Secure Youth Treatment Facility (SYTF) youth at Campus Kilpatrick for potential release to step-down community-based programs. These are the young people who would have been in state lockups before California shut down its youth prison system.

On May 22, the commission’s executive director, Wendelyn Julien, and its chair, Eduardo Mundo, issued a statement stressing that they were “deeply concerned about the ongoing detention of youth” at LP. The judge’s ruling, the statement said, is only the first step, and should be followed up by the commission actually overseeing the depopulation efforts. 

“The POC is equipped and ready to provide this oversight, cautioning against mistaking the plan as sufficient to ensure meaningful change,” the commissioners leaders. “Simply relocating young people without addressing root causes—like intake practices, support services, and staff training, recruitment and retention—risks further traumatizing youth and delaying true justice. We urge all County departments to move beyond status quo operations and commit to transformative reforms.”

No adjudication

Julien and Mundo stressed that more than 85% of youth at LP have not been adjudicated, and have no way to post bail. Ninety-four percent of the youth are kids of color and many are dual status — involved in both the juvenile and child welfare systems. Among those in lockup are victims of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC). Some are pregnant or are parents of young children, said commission members.

In 2025, years after the county committed to a “Care First, Jail Last” ethos, and a vision for “Youth Justice Reimagined,” officials must actually adopt strategies that use youth detention only as a last resort, and instead prioritize community and family reunification and care and healing for system-involved youth, according to the commission.

“These young people are not theoretical. They are part of our community and will return to our community,” Julien and Mundo wrote. “They have endured real trauma and require trauma-informed care — not punitive confinement — to ensure their rehabilitation and community safety.”