Construction of New Juvenile Court Urged in Grand Jury Report

Conditions in the Juvenile Court facility in the City of Orange are “inadequate” and “provide a potential source of legal liability against the county,” according to an Orange County Grand Jury report released Wednesday.

The report urges that the Board of Supervisors “expedite action to construct a new Juvenile Court building” on the site of the Albert Sitton Home in Orange, which would be torn down.

The home is being phased out as an emergency shelter for abused and neglected children as the new $7.5-million Orangewood facility next door is put into use. All children are expected to be housed in the new facility by May, but the site’s use remains undetermined, according to William Steiner, shelter director.

Superior Court Judge Betty Lou Lamoreaux, the new presiding judge of Juvenile Court, said Wednesday that the panel’s recommendations are “delightful because the conditions out here are so atrocious.”

Lamoreaux said she hopes that the report will serve to make construction of a new Juvenile Court building a top county priority and that the Albert Sitton Home site is ideal because it is adjacent to Juvenile Hall, where juvenile offenders are confined.

But Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said that several other uses of the home--including use by the county Probation Department or as a facility for care of emotionally disturbed youngsters--have been proposed.

Riley said the board has several choices of what to do with the site and that it will consider the grand jury recommendations in its regular budget process.

Some of the panel’s sharpest criticism was for the lack of a secure, private passageway from Juvenile Hall to the adjacent Juvenile Court Annex, which consists of 10 trailers linked into a single building in a parking lot.

“Minors in custody, some handcuffed, are led across the open parking lot,” the report says. “This poses a possible danger of attack or abduction. This is also a violation of juvenile confidentiality.”

The grand jury urged that until new facilities are constructed, “a high fence should be built to form a secure walkway that would shield the juveniles from view.”

“The Orange County Grand Jury is concerned that existing conditions in the Juvenile Court facility provide a potential source of legal liability against the county,” the report said.

Other findings:

- The annex area is vulnerable to physical attack and has been the target of threats of gang violence.

- Judges’ chambers are too accessible to the public.

- The facility’s floors “are rotting due to water leakage and termite infestation.”

- Air conditioners or heaters must be turned off during courtroom testimony because they are too noisy.

Riley said that the supervisors were aware of the unsatisfactory conditions at the facility and had been dealing with them on a “piecemeal” basis, but that he had never heard any warning that there might be grounds for legal liability against the county.

Other Problems Cited

Riley said he believes that the grand jury’s manner of presenting its findings was “very severe” and that the Board of Supervisors would not necessarily act to fund a new facility as quickly as the report recommended.

“There’s only so much money to go around, and you have to make these decisions based on what you think is in the best interests of the county,” Riley said.

Lamoreaux, although she praised the report, said that there are problems with the present facility that the report did not mention.

“The juvenile defenders and contract attorneys have no place to interview their clients,” she said. “They do it in the hallways or the parking lot.”

Lamoreaux said she believes unacceptable conditions have been allowed to continue because “no one screams and hollers” about them.

“I’m going to scream and holler until something is done,” she said. “It isn’t right that people have to work under these conditions, to say nothing of the juveniles . . . . I don’t know how much influence I’ll have, but I’m going to scream a lot.”