Supervisors question delays in moving detainees out of Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall

On any given day, 15% of the population of the juvenile hall is waiting for transfer to other facilities after resolution of their cases.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has ordered the Probation Department to determine why juveniles whose cases have resolved are remaining in Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall for days or weeks longer than necessary before they are transferred elsewhere.

The majority of the juveniles in custody at Los Padrinos are “predisposition,” meaning their cases are ongoing. But, on any given day, about 30 to 50 juveniles — or about 15% of the facility’s total population — have been ordered to serve time in another location, such as a juvenile camp, a step-down facility, or a secure youth treatment facility, but haven not been moved yet, according to an approved motion by Supervisors Janice Hahn and Hilda Solis.

“This means for those youth, there is an unnecessary delay in getting to their next placement, and there is a burden on the Los Padrinos facility by increasing the daily population,” the motion states. “As a juvenile hall, Los Padrinos is not an ideal setting for young people to be for extended periods of time. It lacks the consistency in staffing, programmatic opportunities, and homelike environment that the Probation placements, camps, and SYTF facilities are more likely to have.”

The motion directs the Probation Department, in consultation with the county public defender, alternate public defender, the Department of Youth Development and other stakeholders, to report back in 60 days with data on how long adjudicated juveniles are kept at Los Padrinos on average and the reasoning for any delays.

Probation also must provide a list of recommendations to speed up the process. That should include drafting a policy with “recommended and maximum allowable” wait times, streamlining the medical clearance process, exploring more efficient transportation options, and training staff to better handle the logistics of transfers.

The supervisors expect probation’s leadership to implement a system to continuously monitor and evaluate the transfer process with regular reports back, according to the motion.

A spokesperson for the Probation Department declined to comment on the motion.

Reducing the daily population at the troubled Los Padrinos could improve conditions by decreasing the number of juveniles per staff member. The Probation Department has struggled to get officers to show up to work for more than a year and has been unable to hire new recruits quickly enough to keep up with attrition. The increased violence and excessively long shifts spurred by the short staffing have only exacerbated the crisis.

At times, medical leaves and call-outs effectively cut the available workforce by more than half, records showed.

Last year, the state shut down Los Padrinos’ predecessors — Central and Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Halls — due to the deteriorated conditions. Los Padrinos, reopened in July 2023 to consolidate the shuttered juvenile halls, continues to face the same problems, despite a controversial effort to bolster its ranks by redeploying officers from adult probation and its field offices.

Due to the lack of available data, it is unclear why there are hold-ups in the transfer process, according to Eduardo Mundo, a former probation officer and chair of the Probation Oversight Commission.

“We’re trying to figure out why a kid who is ordered to the camp isn’t gone the next day,” he said. “It’s not like we’re taking them to another agency.”

Now that the state no longer runs its own juvenile facilities, the courts typically place juveniles into other county-run facilities. Los Padrinos in Downey is about 45 miles from the secure youth treatment facility in Sylmar, where the majority of post-disposition youth in the county’s custody are held.

Los Angeles County’s juvenile camps and its other facilities, such as the Dorothy Kirby Center in Commerce, which provides mental health services, have not been impacted by the staffing crisis as much as Los Padrinos and have room for transfers, according to Mundo.

The Probation Oversight Commission is working with the juvenile courts, the Probation Department and other stakeholders to try to identify new ways to reduce Los Padrinos’ population. More timely transfers out of Los Padrinos would not solve the problems by itself, but it could prevent harm to a youth forced to stay in a facility that is “not designed for long-term detention,” Mundo said.

“The last thing we want to do is extend that exposure,” he said.

The motion to improve wait times was one of two aimed at the Probation Department at the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, July 23. The supervisors also approved a separate motion from Hahn and Supervisor Lindsey Horvath that directed the county auditor-controller to evaluate the Probation Department’s processes and controls for “overseeing, monitoring and reporting on calendared youth programs and activities at Los Padrinos” and to report back in 60 days.

Los Padrinos failed a state inspection in June after the state’s inspectors reviewed surveillance footage and found the county had provided misleading documents that suggested programs and activities for juveniles were occurring, when, in fact, they were not. As a result, the Board of State and Community Corrections, the regulatory body for California’s jails and juvenile halls, declared Los Padrinos out of compliance with the state’s minimum standards for the second time in a year and could force it to close if the facility doesn’t come back into compliance within the next four months.

At the meeting, Hahn said the problems at Los Padrinos “aren’t related to the facilities themselves, but to systemic issues in the Probation Department.”

“One year in,” she said, “we have now seen this reality — the Probation Department has continued to face challenges with meeting minimum requirements and standards at Los Padrinos.”