Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC)

The California Board of State and Community Corrections is giving Los Angeles County 10 weeks to improve conditions at its two juvenile halls. By Jeremy Loudenback

By Dan Morain

Advocates in California are lobbying Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to set aside $100 million for an effort to steer young people away from involvement in the juvenile justice system across the state.

For the past nine months, advocates have been mounting a campaign to improve the living conditions of youth incarcerated in California’s juvenile halls, camps and ranches. Changes up for approval include requirements that correctional staff respect the gender identity of youth, and that incarcerated youth are granted visits from their children.

According to a new poll released Wednesday by the California Endowment, a majority of California residents say they’d like to see all of the state’s juvenile incarceration facilities closed down. The survey comes at a time when counties are adapting to a significant downturn in youth crime and flagging numbers of young people incarcerated at juvenile camps, halls and ranches across the state.

When Juan Gomez first arrived at a notorious California youth prison in rural Amador County at the age of 16, he remembers an acute sense of powerlessness. Guards at the Preston Youth Correctional Facility patrolled the grounds with impunity, meting out beatings and macings to the youth locked up there.

Nearly six years after he spent more than a month locked up in a juvenile hall in Los Angeles County, Francisco Martines vividly recalled the conditions in his cell. Inside the small concrete room at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, Calif.,

A social worker’s visit with youth offenders at Pelican Bay State Prison. By Wendy Smith The road to Pelican Bay State Prison led through majestic redwoods a stone’s throw from the stirring beauty of Pacific Ocean coastal waters.

Most people have never heard of California’s Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC). But the little-known agency, with 83 employees and a $16 million annual operations budget, packs a punch.