Los Angeles County’s largest juvenile detention center has failed a critical inspection, leaving the county in the unprecedented position of having roughly 260 youth locked up in a facility legally required to close by Thursday, Dec. 12, and nowhere else to put them.
County officials hoped efforts to shore up the diminished number of staff at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall would allow them to avoid a closure once again, but state inspectors, while noting “positive changes,” found the facility still does meet the minimum standards necessary to stay open, according to the Board of State and Community Corrections, the agency overseeing California’s jails and juvenile halls.
The Los Angeles County Probation Department, which operates the juvenile lockups, has refused to say what will happen once the clock runs out.
“While we recognize more improvements are needed, we respectfully disagree with the BSCC overall unsuitability finding, which aims to displace youth,” said Vicky Waters, a spokesperson for the Probation Department. “We have tried working with the BSCC on viable and aggressive solutions, because this needs to be a collaboration to ensure public safety.”
Waters said the department is analyzing its options, but remains “steadfast in maintaining a safe, secure and rehabilitative environment for all youth in our care while addressing systemic issues that have persisted for far too long.”
L.A. County received notice of the failed inspection on the same day the county Board of Supervisors met behind closed doors to evaluate Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa. The chief had submitted a resignation letter announcing his plans to retire by Dec. 31, but has now announced he is staying on.
“We face significant challenges, but I believe we are building a strong foundation, and there is more to be done,” Viera Rosa stated in the announcement. “I remain fully committed to working with my staff, partners, County and State leaders to ensure we turn the tide on challenges the department has faced.”
Viera Rosa took over as the interim chief probation officer in May 2023, a role that became permanent later that year. He inherited a department already in disarray and took the reins just days before the BSCC shuttered two of the county’s other juvenile halls, leaving only the hastily reopened Los Padrinos to hold the displaced populations.
The Probation Department has struggled to maintain proper staffing ratios at Los Padrinos due to a departmentwide epidemic of callouts and medical leaves that has only worsened as the understaffed facility became more and more unsafe. While some of the department’s mandates, such as the forced redeployment of officers from the field, helped temporarily, the improvements have been short-lived, with critics likening the situation to applying Band-Aids to a gaping wound.
Inspectors during the Dec. 5-6 visits to Los Padrinos found the county has “not undertaken a proper staffing analysis” and that while it made strides in reducing the population at Los Padrinos, it simultaneously “further decreased already low staffing minimums” at the same time.
Nearly a quarter of the shifts reviewed during the two-day inspection did not meet the minimum ratios of one officer per 10 youth. Detainees continued to arrive late for school and miss medical appointments and required time outdoors as a result, according to a letter to Viera Rosa from Lisa Southwell, a field representative for the BSCC.
“We found that the current staffing numbers do not allow for all required activities, operations, programs and facility functions, and to ensure the safety of youth and staff,” Southwell wrote.
The BSCC is expected to convene in closed session six days after the deadline to determine its legal options if L.A. County refuses to empty the facility.
A legal opinion in 2000 from then-Attorney General Bill Lockyer suggests the oversight board may have little to no teeth when it comes to enforcement. Lockyer determined the Legislature did not give Board of Corrections, the BSCC’s predecessor, the power to file a lawsuit, or impose sanctions, if a county continued operating a juvenile hall illegally.
Instead, the officials who failed to comply could be charged with misdemeanors and potentially removed from office, according to the opinion.
“The consequences for refusing to obey the law may be severe,” Lockyer wrote.
That, of course, requires state or county law enforcement to file charges against L.A. County’s leaders, something that is equally unprecedented and considered unlikely among stakeholders. Instead, the soon-to-be chaotic battle over Los Padrinos’ future will play out through private lawsuits from advocates and a deluge of motions from defense attorneys.
In a statement, Los Angeles County Public Defender Ricardo D. Garcia described the unsuitable conditions at Los Padrinos as a “staggering failure to provide the safe and supportive environment that our youth deserve,” and said the conditions “perpetuate trauma and denies them an opportunity for meaningful growth.”
“We call for the immediate release of our clients to their families or to non-carceral housing that provides trauma-informed care, access to education and consistent rehabilitative support,” Garcia stated. “Every day they remain in an unsuitable facility deepens the harm and undermines their future.”
The justice system should “prioritize community-based solutions that invest in care, not cages,” he said.
“When I speak to the young people in Los Padrinos, it is absolutely clear that they deserve safety, dignity and opportunity, and we must act now to deliver it,” he said.
Sean Garcia-Leys, a former L.A. County probation oversight commissioner and the co-executive director of the Peace and Justice Law Center, suspects most of the youth in custody at Los Padrinos will remain there on Friday.
“The same 250 kids are going to be subject to the same unlawful conditions they have been subject to for months,” Garcia-Leys said. “What is going to change is the lawfulness of that confinement and what to do about the county’s refusal to obey the law is going to require complex and nuanced actions by the court.”
The process of determining where youth should go — whether to community detention or to other facilities elsewhere in the state — could take weeks or months to resolve, he said. Transfer agreements with other counties should have been negotiated months ago as a backup plan, he said. While other counties have the capacity to take portions of the L.A. County’s juvenile population, most will have staffing limitations as well.
“It’s not as if there are no options,” he said. “It is only that the department, the county and the juvenile court’s inaction has resulted in there being no good option.”
Judges in the L.A. County Superior Court’s juvenile division will also face a unique problem come Thursday. Los Padrinos differs from other juvenile facilities in Los Angeles County in that it is the only facility holding “predisposition youth,” meaning juveniles who have been charged but whose cases have not been adjudicated.
If a juvenile is arrested, particularly for an offense that requires detainment under the law, it’s unclear where a youth would be held until arraignment, creating a potential situation where judges will have to send youth to a facility illegally operating, or to other counties that may not be ready for such an influx, Garcia-Leys said.
For nonserious crimes, a judge will likely have to settle for house arrest, or other types of community detention, in the interim.
None of the members of the Board of Supervisors would comment on the county’s next steps.
