Juvenile Hall Overcrowding Called Degrading; Judge Will Order Limits

The county’s Juvenile Hall is so desperately overcrowded that it has become a “degrading, demeaning, dehumanizing setting” that abuses children’s basic rights, a Superior Court judge said Thursday.

In announcing a tentative ruling in a class-action lawsuit, Judge Robert J. O’Neill said chronic crowding at the hall threatens sanitary conditions, leads to assaults and undermines the hall’s mission of rehabilitating wayward youngsters. Built to accommodate 219, the hall commonly holds 400. O’Neill said he will order a cap on the number at the facility.

Though the county claimed that it is doing its best with limited resources, that is not good enough, O’Neill said.

“The cart is dragging the horse,” O’Neill said. “The system is being driven by its limits, not by its mission.” He added that “right-thinking, caring people” had “shut their eyes to the fact that despite remarkable efforts, we are worse off than we have ever been.”

The judge’s ruling apparently marks another victory for the American Civil Liberties Union in its lengthy quest to ease crowding at San Diego County detention facilities.

The ACLU brought its first suit in 1977, alleging that the downtown County Jail was overcrowded. In 1987, another suit claimed overcrowding at five outlying jails. Both actions resulted in court-ordered caps on the inmate populations at all six facilities.

In 1990, the ACLU alleged in a Superior Court lawsuit that Juvenile Hall is so overcrowded that youths are being deprived of a “safe, decent living environment.” The hall houses youths 10 to 17 years old.

Under state law, a juvenile hall must be run “in all respects as nearly like a home as possible.”