Youth Camps Are Worth the Cost

Re “Youth Camps May Be Victims of Cuts,” Feb. 1: I’m sure I would be dead or in prison right now if it weren’t for the nine months I spent in juvenile probation camp as a 17-year-old. I didn’t know it then, but I needed that time away from the streets to get my mind off survival and back on my future. I met staff and volunteers there who continue to be a big part of my life today, five years later. Now I feel lucky to be able to go back into the camps every week to share my experience with the youths there, and listen to them too.

I can tell you one thing: None of them wants to go to the California Youth Authority, where there’s more “drama” (violence) and the race and gang problems are worse. In the CYA, people prepare for prison, not productive lives back in their communities. They don’t call it “gladiator school” for nothing.

Daniel Cacho

Hawthorne

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I began teaching a writing workshop at an L.A. County juvenile probation camp eight years ago because I was inspired by the focus, motivation and creative gifts of the kids in residence there. For most minors, the probation camps represent the first structured, drug-free environment to which they’ve ever been exposed. The vast majority of the youth there are desperate to find a way out of the self-destructive spirals in which they’ve found themselves.

Closing these camps would mean closing the door to recovery, healing and growth on thousands of misguided young people at a pivotal time in their lives. Without the kind of structured “tough love” intervention the camps offer, these kids will be dumped back on the fast track to prison, and the cost of warehousing them in the future will far outweigh the cost of caring now.

Chris Henrikson

Executive Director

DreamYard/L.A.

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Your article on the dire consequences that would follow the contemplated closure of L.A. County’s 19 juvenile probation camps sounds a much-needed alarm. Despite the continuing fiscal crisis, it is hard to believe that such a measure could even be considered. Though issues of community safety are obvious, another casualty of such a closure is given only passing mention in the article -- education, specifically the educational outcomes for thousands of young people in these camps.

In partnership with the Probation Department, the Los Angeles County Office of Education runs fully accredited schools at the camps and juvenile halls. These specialized programs are giving troubled teens a second chance at school success, which is key to making positive change in their lives. Most young offenders enter our court school system with serious gaps in education and poor academic skills. Yet each year, about 350 students at high risk of dropping out of school earn high school diplomas or GEDs from our camp schools. Others return to their home school districts to complete their education.

Camp students are required to attend school daily, where they receive individualized teaching and support in small classes (maximum 17-1 student-teacher ratio), intensive reading and math instruction, vocational training and structured after-school activities. They are supported by a skilled team of teachers, instructional aides, counselors, administrators and other staff who are dedicated to a very challenging population of students. The jobs of about 300 of our court school staff would be directly affected by closure of all camps. It would be a tragedy to deny students at risk the chance to learn in a school system designed to support their special needs.

Darline P. Robles

Superintendent of Schools

Los Angeles County

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How can you bury such important facts in the middle and deep at the end of a very long article? “Each [California Youth Authority] ward costs the state about $60,000 per year, compared with the $38,343 annual price tag for each youngster housed in Los Angeles County probation camps, officials said.” And “the juvenile justice system is aimed at rehabilitating minors, and often it succeeds. In Los Angeles County, 74% of the youths in juvenile cases never return to court.”

If only all parts of the penal system were so cost-effective and had that level of success.

Judy Thush

Torrance