Funding OKd to House More Juvenile Offenders

In a stopgap measure to ease overcrowding at the county’s woefully outdated juvenile hall, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved $600,000 to create more space to lock up young offenders.

The money is part of a $1.4-million project approved last June that will convert a vacant adult work-furlough building at the Camarillo Airport. Probation officials earlier received $620,000 for the project.

The converted facility will add 40 beds to Ventura’s total of fewer than 300.

But even as he welcomed the funding, the head of the county probation agency warned that the added beds--which are expected to be ready by next summer--will still leave the county far short of the incarceration space it desperately needs.

“This is a step in the right direction,” Chief Probation Officer Cal Remington said minutes after the vote. “But it will not solve our problems. We’re at least 10 years behind the curve. That’s just in bed space. We need to build an entire juvenile justice complex.”

With more young criminals jamming the local justice system and a finite number of custody beds, probation officials say they have room for only the county’s most violent young criminals.

In 1997, more than 1,300 juveniles who could have been booked into juvenile hall in Ventura were refused because of overcrowding, Remington said.

Despite innovative programs like the Tri-County Boot Camp to ease pressure on juvenile facilities, the “lack of beds to house violent juveniles remains at a critical stage,” Remington wrote in a report to the Board of Supervisors.

The issue was thrust into the public eye in February, after a group of Montalvo gang members smashed their way onto a Buena High School bus with a tire iron, terrorizing students.

Less than a week later, five gang members rushed into a continuing education classroom at the Ventura Boys & Girls Club and beat a 16-year-old over the head with a chair. The student received stitches to close a 2-inch gash in his forehead.

Several weeks later, there was a gang-related knife attack at Rio Mesa High School in Oxnard.

Outraged by the spate of violence on and around school campuses, Ventura city officials called an emergency meeting of police officers, school officials, probation authorities and several county supervisors.

“After the school bus attack [the city of Ventura] really galvanized this whole thing,” said Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury. “They breathed new life into this effort, and that’s really the genesis of all this.”

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Ventura Mayor Jim Friedman said the Buena bus incident was a wake-up call to the city of Ventura that the system was not working.

“We very quickly determined that the major problem is you have juveniles committing major offenses, but you have nowhere to put them,” Friedman said.

“We felt that the Ventura P.D. was doing a great job of apprehending these juveniles, but the judges knew they had nowhere to put them, so they would slap them on the wrist and send them home, oftentimes on the very same day.”

Friedman said those who participated in the gang summit were shocked to learn that the number of beds at juvenile hall had remained unchanged at 84 since 1970. Other sites include Colston Youth Center in Camarillo, the Juvenile Restitution Project in Ventura and the boot camp in Santa Barbara County.

“We just about split a gut when we found out that was the case,” Friedman said. “That’s when we really started to apply pressure.”

Supervisor Judy Mikels said she hopes the overflow facility will defuse violence between inmates and inmates and employees.

“It’s a stopgap measure,” Mikels said. “It relieves a little bit of the pressure, until we can build a new facility.”

In coming weeks the county will release a report detailing the needs of the county juvenile justice system. Although not yet public, Remington said the report calls for a juvenile complex that would include detention space with more than 300 new beds, juvenile courtrooms, office space and mental health and other facilities. But Remington estimates that could cost $55 million to $60 million and could be as many as 10 years down the line.

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In the meantime, Remington said, the county will have to struggle to keep a lid on the problem with the resources available.

“We are doing our best to balance the needs of those in custody with protecting the community,” Remington said. “But we are at the end of our rope right now. This is just another Band-Aid.”