Governor speeds juvenile detention releases

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order designed to limit virus exposure and speed the release of some underage inmates after a report found the juvenile justice system suffers from crowding similar to that in adult prisons.

Under the governor’s late Tuesday order all discharge hearings will be held via video conference “to minimize the youths’ and other participants’ exposure to COVID-19.” Hearings for consideration for reentry into the community can now be held at Department of Juvenile Justice facilities, rather than the inmate being brought to court. These changes follow Newsom’s March 24 order which halted the intake of new youth offenders from counties into state juvenile detention facilities.

Far more attention during the virus crisis has gone to the adult prison system. It houses thousands of older and medically vulnerable inmates as well as far more of the kinds of violent and potentially dangerous offenders that crime victims groups have objected to releasing. By contrast, few teens and young adults have died from the disease though younger people have played a key role in its spread.

“It’s encouraging that the governor is focusing on DJJ, and the steps that he outlined are really important ones,” said Renee Menart, a communications and policy analyst with the San Francisco-based Center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice. “At the same time, it’s important to keep in mind that youth at DJJ are serving indefinite sentences.”

Rather than serving specific sentences, youths in the system must meet a series of benchmarks for rehabilitation in order to be released. Menart said this means the system has far more flexibility to release or relocate inmates than the adult correctional system.

Menart is the co-author of the new report released this week, “A Blueprint for Reform: Moving Beyond California’s Failed Youth Correctional System.” The report calls for greater monitoring of the system and for reducing the population.

She conceded many of the policies her group is seeking in relation to the pandemic are similar to what it has already advocated for. Policy changes have made counties less likely to send youths into the system, instead keeping many closer to their support networks while reserving the state system for more serious offenders.

Newsom has embraced these ideas, announcing last year he was moving the juvenile division out of the Department of Corrections. But he has also pushed back at times. Last year he vetoed SB 284, a bill to raise the annual cost the state charges a county to house a juvenile offender from $24,000 to $125,000. In a veto message, Newsom said he did not want to “enact a blanket financial disincentive when there may be more targeted ways” to reduce the incarcerated juvenile population.

Menart said incarcerated youths also do have numerous risk factors compared to youths outside the system. For instance, they are more likely to have asthma or other health problems, and to come from the same poor and minority communities that have suffered especially badly from the disease — places they could bring the virus back to if infected while in custody, she said. “It’s not just that young people might contract COVID-19,” Menart said. “That in itself is a major problem. But the other area we’re really focused on is that youth in DJJ are already experiencing really harmful levels of isolation.”

As in the adult system, the virus is cutting down on opportunities for education, counseling and visitors. The report cites figures that show inmates in the youth system’s three main facilities “spent an average of 13 hours each day alone in their rooms.”

Meanwhile, she said, some youths in two facilities are housed in the same kinds of crowded dormitories that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has been trying to address in its response to the virus.