Juvenile justice shift to strain California counties, they say

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SAN FRANCISCO - As California prepares to shift responsibility for incarcerating delinquent teens to its counties, local agencies have serious questions about their ability to take on the burden.

Under part of Gov. Jerry Brown's realignment plan approved in April, counties can contract with the state to keep their most violent juvenile offenders locked up -- or counties can choose to lock up those offenders themselves.

Either way, it's a problem for cash-strapped counties, say officials in Alameda County, which has the San Francisco Bay Area's most youth offenders in state custody.

Alameda's only long-term facility for youths is Camp Wilmont Sweeney, which houses its 52 wards in a single open dormitory that can hold a maximum of 80 youths.

Officials said the camp simply cannot take on all the 71 juveniles in state facilities, which hold older and more serious offenders. Besides the space issue, a major problem is that the county would be forced to mix 14-year-old burglars with 24-year-old murderers and rapists convicted as juveniles.

"If we're going to take on a much more challenging group of young people," said David Muhammad, the county's chief probation officer, "then we need a facility to effectively serve them."

The problem underscores the difficulties elected officials face as they cut spending, at both the state and local levels, while trying to keep intact basic services such as public safety.

Critics of Brown's plan to shift juvenile offenders say many details have yet to be answered and counties have little time to develop a comprehensive plan for the change, scheduled to start July 1. And officials and some youth advocates fear potentially exorbitant costs and the probability that counties will have to defend themselves against lawsuits.

"There is no real plan," said Barry Krisberg, director of the University of California, Berkeley's Earl Warren Institute. It examines public policy issues, including juvenile justice. "All this has been done by wishful thinking and ideology."

State officials have wanted to make California the nation's first state to eliminate its juvenile justice system as a way to save millions of dollars. Juvenile advocates have long sought the change, saying rehabilitation of young people works better under local control.

The issue isn't new. For 16 years, the state gradually has shifted away from incarcerating youths. Currently, only violent or sex offenders are sent to state youth prisons, which can hold wards until age 25.

In the mid-1990s, about 10,000 juvenile offenders were in state custody. Now there are 1,200, said the California Division of Juvenile Justice.

Brown's plan originally called for the state to shift all juvenile offenders to the counties and to provide funding. The Democrat hoped stable funding would come through ballot measures, but partisan battling has so far torpedoed his plans. Now, local officials are unclear about how much funding the state will provide and whether it will be enough.

State officials say it costs $224,000 a year to house each juvenile offender. It costs Alameda County $70,000 a year for one youth's room, board, schooling and other services at Camp Sweeney.

Contracting with the state would cost Alameda County millions it doesn't have.

Muhammad, like many youth advocates, believes that local control is better for rehabilitation -- the main goal of the juvenile system -- because family and community support is more readily available.

Supporters of county control say taxpayers cannot afford the state system. The latter would need hundreds of millions of dollars in facility upgrades just to comply with the 2004 settlement of a lawsuit demanding better conditions for incarcerated youths. Some see the state's interest in shedding juvenile offenders as a way around having to comply with the lawsuit.

Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco, said the state system is broken beyond repair.

"There is no justification for spending that kind of money without getting any results," he said of the state's costs, adding that there will be "no end in sight" to the money sieve unless responsibility is transferred to the counties.

(Contact Matthai Kuruvila at mkuruvila(at)sfchronicle.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

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