In response to Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent relived proposal to bid farewell to the state youth prison system, several Bay Area counties say they are prepared to take full responsibility for their juvenile delinquents and serve them locally.

“By providing locally based treatment in secured facilities, the Bay Area community will be able to engage their high-risk youthful offenders in effective programming while also ensuring public safety,” said Selena Teji, communications specialist for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ).

The overall plan to abolish the Division of Juvenile Facilities (DJF) shifts the responsibility of jailing all youth from the state to local governments and rid California of a dual juvenile justice system.

In the wake of budget cuts and all around economic hardships, Brown’s vision will save the state an estimated $250 million if the proposed 2012-2013 state budget is enacted.

Currently, California counties are responsible for an annual cost of $125,000 per youth confined to the state’s juvenile correctional system, implemented in the 2011-2012 state budget.
Supporters of the initiative say closing state facilities will reduce costs while improving the treatment of incarcerated youth.

“One of the main problems with large congregate statewide institutional systems like California’s DJF is that it creates transit barriers between the youth and their families,” said Teji. “These facilities are far removed from the urban environments the youth confined there hail from, and their families experience significant difficulty participating in their treatment plans or even attending visitation days.”

“One of the key factors in predicting successful rehabilitation outcomes is familial involvement,” she added.

One Alameda County resident, who wished to remain anonymous, expressed the importance of keeping youth offenders close to home.

“My son was sent to a state youth correctional facility in Stockton and I didn’t have the money [nor] time to visit him on a regular basis,” she said. “He was released last year, but got into more trouble and was charged as an adult. I can’t help but think that if he had the family support he needed, he would have shaped up.”

As of late 2011, California’s DJF’s recidivism rate — rate of juveniles being rearrested within three years of release — was 80 percent. Teji believes this figure demonstrates the limited success the state has at rehabilitating juvenile offenders.

Despite having the highest juvenile felony arrest rate in the state, San Francisco County only housed seven youth in state facilities as of June 2011, according to data from the CJCJ.
Marin, San Francisco, and Santa Clara counties are currently among the five counties that send the fewest youth to the states DJF compared with their juvenile felony arrest rates.

According to June 2011 figures, the Bay Area counties housed a combined 193 youth in the state facilities.

“Compare this to their county institutional capacity, demonstrating an available bed space of 326 beds among their juvenile halls and camps,” said Teji. “You can see that the Bay Area has adequate institutional capacity to realign all youthful offenders.”

Still, experts opposed to the plan say closing the doors to state juvenile facilities could potentially result in more youth being convicted as adults.

Counties such as Alameda — the eighth highest in the state last year to rely on state facilities, placing 65 juvenile offenders in the care of the DJF for an annual cost of $8,125,000 — may have difficulty coping with the delivery of youth from state correctional centers and be forced to send serious offenders to adult prisons.

“There is certainly a possibility that the thirteen state-dependent counties that heavily rely on DJF may increase their prosecution of youth as adults if [the] DJF were no longer an option,” said Teji.

Though there is a possibility, Teji says it’s unclear why prosecutors would send more youth to adult courts if California’s DJF were no longer an option.

“Counties already have better secure facilities and the potential to provide better treatment to high-risk youth [than the] DJF ever has,” she explained.

Alameda County Chief Probation Officer David Muhammad openly stated his intentions to accommodate and serve local juvenile offenders and is intending to recall the youth he has housed in DJF, according to Teji.