Special Needs at Juvenile Hall : It will take more money to keep facility safe and meet standards

One of the problems of Juvenile Hall in Orange is identical to the problem at the county’s jails: too many inmates. But Juvenile Hall has the additional burden of having been built 40 years ago, when the majority of its young population was less violent.

The Probation Department, which runs Juvenile Hall, has started renovating the facility to improve security. It’s a needed task, one that will require more money than is now available to do the job correctly. That means that at budget time, county supervisors will have to pay as much attention to the needs of the Probation Department as to other agencies in the public safety system such as the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office.

In the year ahead, the county plans to install more than 100 video cameras at the detention center for young offenders. That will give probation counselors the ability to monitor hallways, classrooms, social areas and athletic fields.

The state has tough standards for running Juvenile Hall. Those who are locked up attend classes, lectures and sports activities during the day, spending little time in their cells.

The regimen is a valid recognition that most of those behind bars are not yet hardened criminals. Helping them get an education, and steering their energies away from crime, are methods of trying to ensure that this brush with the law is their last.

But the relative freedom at Juvenile Hall makes security a tougher task. As it is, the Probation Department no longer books misdemeanor cases into Juvenile Hall. It also releases scores of juveniles before their terms are up to make room for more serious cases. More than half of the inmates were being held for violent felonies recently.

Over the past 30 years, Probation Department officials have adapted from housing runaways and those accused of petty crimes to more violent gang members and other inmates today. A new wing has been designed with more emphasis on security than the original buildings reflected.

Probation Department workers must walk a fine line between riding herd on potentially violent youths and heeding state orders that Juvenile Hall not be identical to a maximum- security prison for the incorrigible.