Shadow on O.C.’s Joplin Center

If Gov. George Deukmejian wants to see how his plan to cut the budget for juvenile and rehabilitation-related programs will hurt communities and young people who need help turning away from a life of crime, he need look no further than Orange County.

The governor’s plan to cut $36.8 million in juvenile funds would take $2.9 million away from Orange County. There is no way the county can make up that loss. And the only way it can absorb the drastic cut is to close one of its three minimum-security youth camps--probably the 35-year-old Joplin Youth Center--in addition to making severe cutbacks to about eight community organizations that provide shelter, treatment and rehabilitation to thousands each year.

The Joplin Center, located in the foothills of Trabuco Canyon, is an outdoor, ranch-type facility that annually gives about 300 teen-age boys, mostly gang members, an opportunity to turn their lives around before they become irreversibly involved in gang and criminal activity.

At the Joplin camp, the youths attend school for half a day and work the other half. They live in barracks in a rural setting, not an institutional environment, that provides family therapy, one-on-one counseling and a neutral-turf atmosphere.

Without the camp, juvenile officials will be forced to house young offenders in the already- overcrowded Juvenile Hall or refer them to the California Youth Authority for detention. Either choice would place them in contact with more violent and crime-prone youths and would be more costly.

The other alternative is to release the young offenders, denying them the opportunity to break away from their environment and gang influences. On the street they would also lose the camp’s counseling and neutral environment that so often makes the difference between rehabilitation and more serious encounters with police and the juvenile justice system.

Juvenile arrests in Orange County run about 16,000 a year. That figure is 13% of the total number of people arrested. Most juveniles are not held in custody. But of those who are, seven of every 10 stay out of trouble and do not return to the juvenile system system, because of sound rehabilitation programs and places like the Joplin Center.

County officials have asked the governor to reconsider the state cuts in the juvenile budget. He should. If he doesn’t, it will be up to the Legislature to restore them and then override the governor if he vetoes its action.

The state may be facing a tight budget year, but the counties have even less leeway to maneuver within their budget restraints. Budget adoption always involves tough priority decisions. But diverting juvenile funds that could redirect some teen-agers away from a life of crime and save taxpayers incalculable future costs in dollars and social ills is penny wise and pound foolish.