LA County Says It Relocated Nearly 300 Incarcerated Youths Ahead Of Deadline, But Concerns Remain

In May, the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) gave L.A. County 60 days to transfer nearly 300 incarcerated youths to Los Padrinos juvenile hall in Downey after it found facilities in Sylmar and near downtown L.A. to be unsuitable.

Now, the L.A. County Probation Department says it’s done with the move ahead of the July 23 deadline.

In a statement on Wednesday, Guillermo Viera Rosa, the interim probation chief, said the county had gone “from Mission Impossible to mission accomplished.”

But some youth justice reform advocates and family members of incarcerated youth are skeptical that the move to Los Padrinos will solve issues facing the department.

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“I think it’s really premature to say 'mission accomplished' unless your only mission was to move children from one facility to another without addressing any of the underlying issues that required you to move them in the first place,” said Aditi Sherikar of the activist group Los Angeles Youth Uprising and a senior policy associate at Children’s Defense Fund of California.

Those underlying issues include failures on safety checks, programming and access to bathrooms at the previous facilities.

In May, 18-year-old Bryan Diaz died of an apparent drug overdose at Barry J. Nidorf hall in Sylmar.

The department has also been plagued by staffing issues, which parents say have kept kids from attending school.

Viera Rosa said the move to Los Padrinos will help boost staffing as the county tries to bring on hundreds of new recruits.

For her part, Sherikar said she would like to see what the county has planned for alternatives to incarceration for the nearly 300 pre-disposition youth who were transferred to Los Padrinos while they await trial.