Supervisors cited a Southern California News Group report in early May about wait times of three hours or more for lawyers and social workers to see their clients.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, May 21, ordered the Probation Department to analyze and improve excessively long wait times for attorneys, doctors and social workers visiting Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey.
The motion, approved unanimously, comes after attorneys from the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office and the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Loyola Law School told the Southern California News Group that waits as long as three hours were hindering their efforts to provide legal services to clients at the juvenile detention facility.
“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,” said Supervisor Hahn, who represents Downey, in a statement. “This is unacceptable. The Probation Department needs to make immediate changes to allow people to see their clients faster and has to be transparent with our Board moving forward about the wait times at our juvenile facilities.”
Related: Attorneys, social workers endure long waits to see LA County detainees in juvenile hall
Hahn co-authored the motion with board Chair Lindsay Horvath. At the meeting, Horvath said ensuring attorneys have timely access to their clients is not only important for honoring constitutional rights, but it helps achieve the county’s goal of “making sure our young people are getting the service and support that they need.”
“Decreasing wait times and increasing predictability for professional services at Los Padrinos is among the actions the Probation Department must take to better serve the youth entrusted to its care,” Horvath said in a statement.
The motion directs the Probation Department to return with a report in four weeks that includes three months of data on wait times, analysis about the causes and the strategies “being implemented to reduce wait times and ensure timely access to visits from counsel, social workers and other experts.”
Defense attorneys told the Southern California News Group in early May that they experienced such long wait times at Los Padrinos that attorneys have to schedule their entire day around such visits.
“Everybody knows that this is the new normal; if you get there past 8:30 a.m., then you’re waiting,” said Roshell Amezcua, director of the Juvenile Justice Law Center. “If you’re not the very first person, then you’re waiting two to three hours.”
Complaints about wait times have come up repeatedly at Probation Oversight Commission meetings in the last year.
The county Probation Department has denied the problem is widespread and indicated only a small percentage of attorneys — about 10% — experienced wait times longer than 20 minutes in April. The department previously installed four private booths in the chapel at Los Padrinos in an effort to improve wait times.
The Juvenile Justice Law Center filed a formal complaint with the department’s ombudsman May 20 reiterating that visits to Los Padrinos had become “unduly burdensome.” Wait times in excess of 45 minutes have been deemed unconstitutional in the past, according to a letter attached to the complaint.
“Here, wait times regularly exceed 45 minutes. Indeed, wait times regularly exceed two hours, and sometimes visits are denied outright,” the letter states. “The JJC’s experience does not exist in isolation. Our discussions with other juvenile defense attorneys at the Los Angeles Public Defender’s Office and the Los Angeles County Independent Defense Counsel’s Office indicate that these wait times are pervasive, common, and well-known to probation staff and directors.”
