Supervisors OK Boot Camp Plan for Young Offenders

Taking the first step to reduce overcrowding at Juvenile Hall, Ventura County supervisors agreed Tuesday to join two area counties in establishing a military-style boot camp for nonviolent youth offenders.

The supervisors voted unanimously to join Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties in accepting an $865,000 federal grant to develop the juvenile camp. The county will have to come up with a matching amount of $140,000.

Before the vote, corrections officials cautioned that the boot camp is a short-term solution to a crowding problem that has reached crisis proportions. They also conceded to the board that they do not know now where the operating money for the camp--which could cost the county as much as $700,000 a year--will come from.

Nevertheless, it is important that steps be taken now to deal with the growing Juvenile Hall population before it worsens, said Frank Woodson, director of the county’s Corrections Services Agency. The hall is designed to hold 84 pretrial detainees, but now holds a daily average of 110 to 115 youths, creating safety and liability issues, he said.

“You have to realize that it’s a commitment that we’d have to make eventually,” Woodson told the board.

Supervisor Judy Mikels agreed.

“We can no longer afford to wait,” she said. “We all know that government moves very slowly and that if we don’t start now, next year we’ll be saying the same things.”

The federal grant money will be used to finance construction of a 40-bed dormitory in the existing Los Prietos Boys Camp in Santa Barbara County, officials said. The camp is in the Los Padres National Forest, about 30 miles north of Santa Barbara.

Ventura County would have control of 20 beds at the boot camp, which could be used by about 80 youths throughout the year, Woodson said.

If all goes as planned, he estimated that the first inmates could be sent to the camp in about 18 months. They would range in age from 15 to 18 and serve three to four months each, Woodson said.

Once at the camp, juveniles would undergo a strict regimen of exercise, school, forestry work and military-style discipline designed to discourage criminal behavior while providing some direction in life, Woodson said.

He said a similar boot camp run by Los Angeles County the past two years has produced positive results. He added that one survey found a majority of the youths who had spent time at that camp had not committed an offense during the one year after their release.

“I think when you have all of these things intertwined, the counseling and the education and the military-style discipline, you have a much better chance of succeeding,” Woodson said.

As for operating costs, he said it’s possible that some funding could come from Proposition 172, a voter-approved sales tax measure that sets aside money for public safety services. But Woodson said his agency will continue to look for other, more stable sources of funding.

Also Tuesday, Juvenile Court Judge Steven Z. Perren joined Woodson in urging the board to begin long-range planning for the development of a $20-million juvenile justice center, which would house under one roof a juvenile hall, courts and probation offices.

“Any arrest made by a law enforcement agency, and any conviction achieved in the Juvenile Court, may well be rendered all but meaningless unless we have appropriate resources--including locked facilities--to ensure that the community, the victim and the minor receive true justice,” Perren said.

Mikels said she supports development of a juvenile justice center.

“We all pray that we don’t need these buildings for our young people,” she said. “But reality says that we will always need these facilities.”