On Thursday of this week, the ACLU of So Cal, Public Counsel, the Disability Rights Legal Center announced the settlement of a landmark class action lawsuit filed in mid-January of this year, charging that LA County Probation’s largest juvenile probation camp, known as Challenger, had failed to provide the kids locked up within its boundaries with even the most basic kind of education. (Nevermind that it costs more than $50,000 a year to incarcerate a kid at Challenger.)
January’s lawsuit, filed also against he Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), described conditions inside the camps as “conscience-shocking.” As lead attorney Mark Rosenbaum put it, it was “a scandal of dimensions that would make Dickens shudder.”
Quite frankly, Rosenbaum was not speaking at all in hyperbole.
The stories detailed in the legal filing, plus the anecdotal tales I’ve been privy to since the suit was filed, live up to that description and then some.
A kid who spent his high school years at Challenger, received a “diploma” even though he was so functionally illiterate he couldn’t read street signs or the simplest words on a restaurant menu. Nonetheless, a specially designated teacher spoon-fed the kid answers so that he could pass the state-mandated exam, thus getting him a diploma—which he couldn’t read. (And he was one of many.) (Frank Stoltz of KPCC did a good report at the time of some of the individual cases.)
Kids were locked in solitary confinement for months with no instruction at all, excluded from class repeatedly for minor infractions, allegedly forced to stand outdoors for hours in 100 plus degree heat, and on and on.
In the class, state standards were not enforced, and there appeared to be no teacher accountability so teachers simply showed movies or failed to show up at all at times.
Oh, and by the way, this was the new and improved situation at Camp Challenger, which—at the time of the January lawsuit—was already the target of a United States Department of Justice investigation over mistreatment of the 650 students housed in the facility.
Not pretty.
Okay, that’s the bad news.
BUT THERE IS GOOD NEWS
The good news is that, under new probation Chief Donald Blevins, the lawsuit has been settled, with an entire action plan of hardcore but extremely constructive conditions attached to the settlement.
Furthermore, the settlement was one that both Blevins and company and the ACLU and partners truly seemed to jointly welcome. Thursday’s joint press conference was an absolute “love fest,” as one observer put it.
Love fest or no, the agreement has teeth in that it will be overseen by a federal judge for four years, just to make double sure that the planned reforms are fully implemented. (Not that anybody’s untrusting, or anything.)
One more thing, this week’s settlement also provides reading and educationally remedial instruction for the 2500 or so kids who were denied adequate education from 2008 until now at Challenger.
The latter structure only allocates around $2,000-$2500 a kid, which isn’t going to go far for some. But it’s a start. And that is a very good thing.
AND IN OTHER LEGAL NEWS….JUDGE RULES RESIDENCE LIMITS FOR SEX OFFENDERS IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
The LA Times Andrew Blankstein has the story. Here’s a clip:
California corrections officials this week stopped enforcing portions of Jessica’s Law in Los Angeles County after a judge ruled that the 2006 statute restricting how close sex offenders can live to parks or schools is unconstitutional.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza concluded that the controversial measure left sex offenders in some areas with the choice of being homeless or going to jail because the law restricts them from living in large swaths of some cities such as Los Angeles.
It’s absurd to put it to the people to vote on feel-good things like limits to how far sex offenders may live from schools and other sensitive use areas, without taking into account their alternatives, so they crowd into a few seedy places in the middle of nowhere where they can’t get jobs or are homeless. Making them MORE potential threats to society. There has to be some sort of balance, and monitoring instead. Much better to know WHERE these people live and work than to drive them underground or jobless.
Kind of like the city “clowncil” approving the City Attorney and deputy Jane Usher’s ordinance limiting medical marijuana shops to 1000 ft. from “sensitive use areas” despite warning from the Building & Safety Dept. that this would put 95% of the city off limits and leave nowhere even for shops deemed legal by city ordinance to relocate. So, da-da, they were “surprised” to find that only 45 shops could re-open scrambling for allowed areas, way below even the 75 allowed to remain out of many hundreds. At least they didn’t ask voters to determine that, they did it all by themselves. (What is the status of sending that one back to the drawing boards, meanwhile?)
Making their mishandling of the medical marijuana issue even more incompetent, the City Council under the brilliant inspiration of Janice Hahn, now wants to tax the sale of medical marijuana. I.e. those shops which somehow managed to survive despite their bungling.
BUT WAIT: the sale of marijuana for profit is illegal, period, under the interpretation of the state law by Trutanich, Usher et al, so the Council in effect, wants to tax profits they themselves have deemed illegal. Making them accessories to illegal activity.
Sales are supposed to be ‘non-profit’ and under Trutanich-Usher’s extreme interpretation, there is no money supposed to change hands at all – so WHAT is there to tax at all?
Re: the Challenger story: horrible that the state spent $50,000/ per juvenile yet failed to educate them and put them in sub-standard, dehumanizing conditions. Almost pushing them into a life of crime when they are released. AT the least they should have vocational training and assistance getting internships, skills and hope.
I hope the program you discuss finally changes that (no time to real all the details right now).