State Panel OKs $40.5 Million for Juvenile Hall

Swayed by tales of aging facilities and overcrowded conditions, a state committee has recommended that Ventura County receive $40.5 million to build a new youth detention center.

Although the county has yet to purchase a site for the proposed complex, the executive steering committee of the state Board of Corrections determined that the county’s existing juvenile facilities are too old and too dangerous to continue housing youthful offenders.

In fact, of the more than 40 counties competing for $168 million in available state and federal funds this year, Ventura County was rated No. 2 in terms of need, behind Contra Costa County in Northern California. Ventura County, however, was given more money to address its problems than any other county.

“We have tried desperately to patch the cracks,” said Supervisor Kathy Long, who served on the 10-member committee and announced its findings Monday. “That need came across loud and clear.”

The Board of Corrections is scheduled to make a final decision on the committee’s recommendation May 20, but county leaders said they fully expect the grant to be approved.

Monday’s announcement caps a nearly decade-long effort to improve the county’s deteriorating juvenile facilities. Although the nearly 60-year-old juvenile hall has just 84 beds, it houses an average of 109 youths each day.

Judges and probation officials have long complained about the need for more substance-abuse and mental-health treatment programs for underage offenders, and expressed concern about the potential for violence inside the cramped buildings.

“You can’t help a kid when you put him in a facility that says, ‘We don’t care,’ ” said Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren, one of two judges who preside over the county’s juvenile courts.

This modernization plan, he said, “is visionary, it is enlightened and it says, ‘Kids, this county cares about you and it’s time you started caring for yourself.’ ”

Last week, Perren and eight other county representatives traveled to Sacramento to urge the corrections committee to set aside money for the proposed detention center, which is expected to cost $65 million and have space for up to 420 juvenile offenders--more than twice the number now housed in four separate facilities.

Chief Probation Officer Cal Remington said the lobbying group worried that the committee might frown upon their request, because the county has yet to nail down a site for the proposed center. Although industrial properties in El Rio and Saticoy are under consideration, no deals have been reached.

But Remington said pictures of the aging juvenile hall, with its rusty pipes and cramped quarters, were persuasive. So were the county’s statistics about inmate overcrowding.

Those figures indicate that in 1997, juvenile hall was overcrowded on all but one day of the year. They also show that 1,360 felony offenders were released early because of space limitations.

In his opening comments to the committee, Remington cited a 1997 Board of Corrections study that called juvenile hall “antiquated and inadequate from a physical standpoint and in need of replacement.”

Perren handled the closing remarks, telling the committee that it is difficult to reform and rehabilitate young offenders in this environment.

“It is not about bricks and mortar, it is about accepting the underlying principle of juvenile and reformative justice,” he said. “Get the kid to school and out of the gang, teach him self-respect and stop the abuse of alcohol, marijuana and drugs . . . and do all of this in a place that says the kid has a chance, and not in an antiquated double-bunked juvenile hall whose pipes are rotting and whose walls crack with age.”

On Monday, Remington said last week’s presentation worked out well. “We said, we’re doing our best,” he said, “but it’s an old money pit.” And a potentially dangerous one.

With juvenile inmates living in such crowded conditions, rival gang members often cannot be separated. County officials have long feared that such violence could boil over into a deadly incident.

“We have a pressure-cooker situation and that makes it dangerous for them and dangerous for our staff,” said Supervisor Judy Mikels, who was been involved in crafting the county’s grant application. “It is absolutely critical to this county that we do this now.”

And the clock is ticking. The county must complete construction of the detention center by Sept. 30, 2003, or it risks losing the state funding. In that time, the county must identify and purchase a site, complete the environmental review process and build the center.

“There is a lot of work in front of us,” Remington said.

Counties are required to pay 10% of the cost. But Ventura County is planning to pay much more.

Last month, county supervisors agreed to spend $23 million on the project. The county also set aside an additional $9 million for planning and site preparation.

The proposed detention center would be part of a larger juvenile justice complex that officials hope to build in the next 10 years. The complex would eventually include at least six courtrooms, expanded inmate housing and court-related administrative offices on about 40 acres.

“It’s badly needed,” said Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, who said he was delighted that the committee recommended granting the full amount of funding the county had requested.

“It didn’t happen by accident,” he said. “It was the result of a lot of hard work by a lot of people, especially Cal Remington.”

Times staff writer Anna Gorman contributed to this story.