Cutting Back at the Camps : Officials Fear Budget Slash Will Force County to Close Rural Facility for Juveniles

Growing up a gang member on the streets of Santa Ana, John looked with admiration and envy at the older neighborhood kids who thrived on defying the law and inevitably wound up slammed into a juvenile hall.

“That made you an idol, it got you noticed,” he recalls. “It’s like, ‘Hey, I like that guy. He don’t care if he gets locked up.’ ”

John didn’t wait long to follow their lead. Now just 15, the burly youth has already been sent into the juvenile justice system eight times on gun possession, theft and assault offenses--some committed for money, others for acceptance, still others just for the “fun” of scaring and hurting someone, he says.

But this time around, John professes a change in attitude; he says he’s not going back “inside” and pledges to straighten himself out, perhaps go to college to play football and learn electronics.

One-on-One Counseling

The difference, he maintains, is the one-on-one counseling, the schooling and the constructive environment of his present home--the county’s Joplin Youth Center, a minimum-security youth camp where he says he has finally realized that a life of juvenile delinquency was “not getting me anywhere.”

Founded 3 decades ago in the rugged foothills of Trabuco Canyon, the camp is meant to give about 300 troublesome youngsters each year a place to work the fields, go to school, get some discipline into their lives and escape the city problems that had led to their becoming wards of the criminal justice system--in short, to start their lives over.

Now, however, the future of this camp and scores of other programs like it around the state that seek to turn around “at-risk” youthful offenders has been thrown into doubt, their fate in the hands of state lawmakers.

County officials say Gov. George Deukmejian’s proposal to cut funds for juvenile detention, rehabilitation and drug treatment by 55%--threatening Orange County with the loss of $2.9 million--would almost certainly mean shutting down at least one of the county’s three minimum-security youth camps. And that one, they say, probably would be Joplin.

The cutbacks would have similarly dire effects on the county Halfway House and about eight other community-based organizations that provide shelter, treatment and rehabilitation for thousands of people each year and that rely in large part on state funding, the officials say.

The governor’s proposed budget cutbacks have sparked tremors of alarm and protest by law enforcement officials, who are trying to persuade the Legislature to restore funding and override a possible veto by the governor.

Many in California’s juvenile law enforcement community project that the cuts would leave local juvenile judges with only two extreme and undesirable options: putting juvenile offenders back out on the streets or sending them to the more institutionalized setting of the California Youth Authority.

And this latter alternative would only end up costing taxpayers as much as $74 million a year more in the long run, juvenile officials argue, because it costs more to house a child in the already-overcrowded Youth Authority facilities than in such county-based alternative programs as Joplin.

“This would have a tremendous impact in undercutting our efforts to get to these kids at an early stage and try and set them straight,” said C. Robert Jameson, presiding judge of the county’s Juvenile Court.

“What you’ll see is more serious juvenile offenders graduating to become even more serious adult criminals,” he warned in an interview.

Some state officials have leveled criticism at the extensive array of juvenile camps and diversion centers in California, saying that the Youth Authority can do just as good a job of reforming young offenders.

But adding credence to the success stories of local juvenile officials, a private study prepared for the Legislature in June, 1988, concluded that there is a clear need to expand county-based, alternative juvenile programs.

Even the governor’s office maintains that the proposed cuts of $36.8 million in county funding for juvenile and rehabilitation-related programs is a product of fiscal realities--not a reflection of the effectiveness of these programs.

“The governor’s hands were really tied,” said Cindy Katz, assistant director of the state Department of Finance. “The way the budget process is set up, the governor only has discretion over about 8% of all funding, and this happens to be one of them. These were tough decisions.”

But she added: “We know that these are effective programs for dealing with juveniles, and it was our feeling that the counties would be able to pick up the slack for some of the more critical areas.”

But county officials, facing budget problems of their own, say the money is just not there.

“I just don’t see how we could come up the money ourselves, not now,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas F. Riley said of a proposal that could cut local juvenile funding from $5.2 million to $2.3 million.

“And it’s really too bad,” he added, “because these programs are essential to Orange County. The results we’re getting are really gold-plated for the amount of money that’s going into them.”

Michael Schumacher, the county’s chief probation officer, said that while budgets cuts are routinely suggested from year to year, this year’s proposed 55% reduction “is really unheard of. And there was no advance warning.”

As opposition within the law enforcement community has mounted to the proposal, some sources have said that the Legislature is virtually certain to restore all or most of the $36.8 million and brace for a possible veto by Deukmejian. One subcommittee has already voted to do just that.

Nonetheless, county officials remain deeply troubled. “We view this as a very serious and very grave threat,” said Schumacher, who heads a county advisory panel that has urged Deukmejian to reconsider his plan.

The programs potentially threatened by the cutbacks are exceptionally broad in nature, touching on the housing, schooling, job training, drug- and alcohol-counseling, prosecution and legal assistance of young people who find themselves in trouble, as well as some older criminal offenders and indigents.

But attention thus far has centered mainly on the specific threat to the county’s three juvenile camps--the Joplin Youth Center, the Youth Guidance Center in Santa Ana and the Los Pinos Conservation Center in Cleveland National Forest off Ortega Highway.

If the cuts go into effect, Schumacher said, Joplin seems most likely to have to close because its budget and size--it holds about 60 male teen-agers--most closely fit the projected shortfall. Its closure would in turn increase overcrowding and force shortages at the other facilities, he said.

Joplin director Allen A. Lindeman said the prospect of the youth camp’s closure sends a dangerous signal about the community’s commitment to helping reform juveniles, who might only be hurt by the severity of life inside a Youth Authority facility.

“They need a place like this,” Lindeman said. “The kids need a place to relax--they’ve been out going gang-banging and shooting people and getting shot at and taking drugs and hassling with parents for so long. This is a cooling-off period.

“We try to take a kid who’s out of control, get him back in control and give him a real chance at making it,” he said.

The youths, most ages 14 to 16, have been sent to Joplin for a few months by the courts for drug possession, theft, gang fighting and other offenses, but Joplin is not a prison. Known as an “open” juvenile camp, the place has few fences or locks, and its only barriers face those who would enter, not those who seek to leave.

Camp supervisors use a few physical restraints to hinder escape--such as making new campers wear easily identifiable, bright red shirts, as well as sandals that are hard to run in.

But by and large, Lindeman said, the focus is on psychological tactics and counseling to make the offenders see the benefits of the place and to keep them there. So far this year, he said, only three have run away.

Housed in a single dormitory-style room, the 45 to 60 youths who stay at Joplin at any given time attend a full day of academic classes, including computer training. They also have access to athletic and recreation facilities, and are expected to work as part of their sentence.

And perhaps most critically, they meet regularly with counselors, as well as clergy if they wish, to discuss their cases--the kind of individual attention that juvenile officials say is not available in Youth Authority facilities.

John, the Santa Ana gang member who says he carried his first gun at age 7, pointed to this counseling as the main reason for a change in his attitude, a view that was echoed by director Lindeman.

“This place is a real experience for me because (in Santa Ana) I don’t see the things I get to see here--different colored birds, bobcats, mountain lions. I like that,” John said.

“It’s really just about the way the people treat you here,” John said. “They talk to you. It took a while, but they made me realize that hey, this (gang and criminal activity) ain’t worth it, it’s not getting me anywhere.”

COUNTY YOUTH CAMPS

The county’s three juvenile camps are threatened by Gov. Deukmejian’s proposed budget.

YOUTH GUIDANCE CENTER

125 BEDS / CO-ED

JOPLIN YOUTH CENTER

60 BEDS / ALL BOYS

LOS PINOS CONSERVATION CENTER

125 BEDS / ALL BOYS