Youth Camp Receives Funds to Stay Open

A juvenile probation camp in Ventura County has received $148,845 in state funds to help it keep operating, officials said.

The Colston Youth Camp in Ventura is one of dozens of juvenile probation camps in California that were threatened with closure during last summer’s budget wrangling in Sacramento, said Sarah Andrade, spokeswoman for the California Youth Authority.

The county-run camps were saved, however, after Gov. Pete Wilson signed a bill allocating $33 million in state funds. The money released to Colston last week is the first of four installments it will receive for the fiscal year, Andrade said.

Funding for each county is based on the camp’s population, she said.

Juvenile probation camps such as Colston are considered a “last stop” for young offenders--one step short of commitment to the California Youth Authority, she said. “Judges will try local options first before turning to a CYA facility,” Andrade said.

A bill to provide state money for the camps received bipartisan support because many legislators believed that if the camps closed, juvenile offenders probably would have been freed on unsupervised probation, or sent to group homes or the CYA at a higher cost to taxpayers, she said.

Most offenders spend about six or seven months in a county camp, where they undergo a variety of programs, including education, job training and counseling, she said.