County Considers Closing Probation Camps : Budget: Department official says such a drastic move is the only way to make required cuts. Several supervisors say they’ll fight it, and young inmates and facility officials call it a bad idea.

Los Angeles County officials are considering a proposal to close 19 of 20 county probation camps--a cost-cutting move they warn could place thousands of convicted young felons on the streets.

However, at least three members of the Board of Supervisors said Friday that they will oppose the move and it appeared unlikely that the board would vote to approve a wholesale closing of the camps.

Still, Chief Probation Officer Barry Nidorf said such a move is the only way his department can make $40.6 million in cuts that analysts project will be required for the 1992-93 county budget.

“Nobody wants to close the camps. Everybody is horrified to think this might happen,” Nidorf said. “The only reason I am doing this is because I have no other logical recommendation.”

About 4,500 young offenders a year are placed in the camps, which are an alternative to detention in California Youth Authority facilities. Without the camps, most of the young convicts would be placed on probation and released to their communities because state facilities are already overcrowded, officials said.

“I know (running the camps) is expensive,” said Richard Shumsky, president of the 1,500-member union local that represents probation officers. “But if you add the expense of the crimes they will do and the cost to the victims, our program is terribly cost-effective.”

About 800 probation jobs would be eliminated and 1,500 workers demoted if the camps are closed, Shumsky said.

The boys and girls assigned to the camps range in age from 12 to 18 and have been convicted of a variety of offenses. Many have committed drive-by shootings or armed robberies, or are repeat offenders involved in less serious felonies. Typically, youths serve five- to six-month sentences at the camps.

At Camp David Gonzales in Calabasas, news of the impending cuts was not well received.

“It’s not Disneyland and it’s not the CYA, but it sets a person straight and lets a person see the do’s and don’ts of life,” said one 17-year-old camp resident, convicted recently of armed robbery.

Camp Director Robert Stanley said that nearly all 125 wards of the camp are hard-core gang members. The youths are under 24-hour supervision and those who misbehave are placed in one-person, windowless cells for several days.

“This is jail,” Stanley said. “It’s serious business.”

The proposed closing of the camps is one of the first salvos in what promises to be a long and bitter fight over next year’s county budget. Supported entirely by county funds, the camps are not mandated by state law, making them especially vulnerable to cuts in an era of fiscal austerity.

But supervisors said they are unlikely to phase out all of the camps as proposed. “I think that would be a disaster,” Supervisor Ed Edelman said. “We can’t accept this kind of cut. We’ll have to find the money somewhere or cut elsewhere.”

Edelman said he will meet next week with Nidorf and Chief Administrative Officer Richard Dixon to discuss alternatives to closing the camps.

Dennis Morefield, spokesman for Supervisor Deane Dana, added: “We will not be supporting (closing the camps) without a strong fight. That’s a last resort.”

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, a longtime supporter of the camps, called the program a “top priority.” Antonovich said, “When the budget hearings take place . . . we will work to keep these camps open.”

Still, the Probation Department will face some difficult choices in the coming year.

“I don’t know where the money (for the camps) is going to come from,” Nidorf said. “As long as I face that kind of curtailment of funds, I don’t know what else to recommend.”

Nidorf said Dixon recently told him that the Probation Department will need to eliminate $40.6 million from its $244.2-million budget in the next fiscal year.

Most department functions--including court-ordered investigations and supervision of released convicts--are mandated by state law and cannot be cut further, he said.

Under the Probation Department proposal, only one camp would remain open--the Dorothy F. Kirby Center in East Los Angeles. Closing the camps would save $53 million. About $13 million would be diverted into community crime-prevention programs, Nidorf said.

Three camps would be shut down July 1. Six more would close Aug. 1 and five more would close Sept. 1. The Challenger Memorial Youth Camp in the Antelope Valley, the county’s largest facility of its kind, would be closed Oct. 1.

Nidorf said all youths currently in the system would be allowed to graduate from the camps.

The Probation Department began to notify instructors at the camps last week that they may be laid off.

Union officials are calling for an emergency meeting of camp workers next week to organize resistance to the cuts. The union is also planning a campaign to urge elected officials, clergy and judges to support the camps.

County officials said some young offenders would inevitably be diverted to the facilities of the California Youth Authority, which houses the state’s most violent and dangerous juvenile offenders.

“That would be catastrophic for the Youth Authority,” said Tony Cimarusti, a spokesman for the youth authority in Sacramento. Statewide, the Youth Authority’s 11 institutions house 8,400 inmates and are operating at 126% of capacity, he said.

Operated by Los Angeles County since 1935, the camps allow young offenders to remain close to their families and communities while in custody, in hopes of giving them a better chance to turn their lives around.

Juvenile Court Judge Orville Armstrong said the loss of the camps would take away an important sentencing alternative on which judges have come to rely.

“The minors who go to camps benefit enormously,” Armstrong said. “The camps are very effective in their rehabilitation. When (youths) come back, you can see the difference. Their grades have improved, and they’ve set goals for themselves.”

On Friday, the inmates at Camp Gonzales praised programs at the facility, where they can attend high school classes, learn computer skills and work in a sewing shop where they make camp uniforms.

One muscular 17-year-old convicted armed robber from Santa Fe Springs is set to leave the camp at the end of April after living there since August. He has earned his high school equivalency certificate at the camp and hopes to go to a community college.

Maybe, he says, he will become a probation officer one day.

“I probably wouldn’t have rehabbed myself” in the Youth Authority, he said. “From what I hear from my homeboys . . . you spend all your time in the cell.”