Countywide : Supervisors Will Study Juvenile Hall Problems

The county must find more beds for youths in trouble with the law and look for alternatives to incarcerating such youngsters in order to ease overcrowding at Juvenile Hall, Supervisor Harriett Wieder said in a letter released Thursday.

The detention facility in Orange can hold 334 juveniles. But it held an average daily population of 360 in November and 353 in December, Wieder said.

“We can expect the problem to worsen this spring, when admissions are typically the highest each year,” Wieder said in a letter to colleagues on the Board of Supervisors, who will consider the problems of Juvenile Hall at their meeting next Tuesday.

While Juvenile Hall may be overcrowded, it continues to provide “proper and safe detention” facilities for the youths, an official of the state Department of Youth Authority told the county’s Probation Department in a Dec. 29 letter.

Juvenile Hall has had periods of serious overcrowding for years. Last year, county supervisors appointed a Juvenile Justice Commission to study the problem. Commission members were drawn from the county administrative office, the district attorney’s office, the health care agency, the public defender’s office, Superior Court and the Probation Department, which runs Juvenile Hall.

The commission said last month that solutions to overcrowding could include expansion of home confinement programs and opening a 16-bed dormitory at Los Pinos Conservation Camp, next to the Cleveland National Forest.

Wieder, in her letter Thursday, said: “It is imperative that we continue to examine our bed-space needs in Juvenile Hall and examine all appropriate alternatives to incarceration.”