Los Padrinos adds more space for attorneys, new staff to address hours-long waits

The Probation Department initially denied hours long waits were common, but later acknowledged it was not properly tracking the entire time attorneys were waiting to see clients.

The Los Angeles County Probation Department has doubled the space available for attorneys at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall and added more staff to assist them in response to a Southern California News Group report that found attorneys and social workers were waiting up to three hours to meet with their clients.

Those long waits created hindrances for legal services by forcing attorneys to decide between scheduling their entire day around visits or leaving without seeing their client, and may have violated the juveniles’ constitutional rights.

The Board of Supervisors, on a motion from Supervisors Janice Hahn and Lindsey Horvath in late May, ordered the Probation Department to reduce wait times at the Downey detention facility and to report back within a month.

“Lawyers, doctors, and social workers need to be able to visit their young clients at Los Padrinos, and they shouldn’t have to wait two or three hours to see them,” Hahn, who represents Downey, said at the time. “This is unacceptable.”

Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa, in a July 12 letter, told the supervisors wait times dropped to an average of 10 minutes in the latter half of May, following the redeployment of field officers to Los Padrinos.

“The staffing increase in May 2024 allowed the facility to improve wait times and train others to ensure sustainability,” Viera Rosa wrote. “An additional officer was added to the team to assist with the transporting of the youth to the attorney visiting areas. In June 2024, four additional visiting pods were approved, which will double the private visiting areas for attorneys and professional visits.”

The Probation Department previously denied there was a widespread problem, saying only about 10% of attorneys experienced wait times in excess of 20 minutes in April, according to their review of visitor logs. Attorneys at the time argued the department’s analysis was not consistent with their personal experiences.

In his letter to the supervisors, Viera Rosa acknowledged the department later discovered its visitor logs were inaccurate. Staff only tracked the time from when an attorney arrived at the chapel — where the visiting pods are located — and did not include any of the time spent waiting in the lobby.

The department has since updated its logs to include wait times in both areas and will require an assistant superintendent, or designee, to sign off on sign-in sheets at the end of each shift. Probation’s leadership met with the offices of the Public Defender, Alternate Public Defender, the Probation Oversight Commission and County Counsel in June and heard concerns about poor communication during unforeseen incidents, its limited staffing and space, and the department’s lack of a policy surrounding visitations, according to Viera Rosa’s letter.

The department has drafted, but is still reviewing, a policy that will set a maximum wait time and require documentation when that time is exceeded.