State board votes to further delay shuttering of two L.A. County juvenile halls

Los Angeles County has been granted additional time to come up with a detailed plan that would prevent California’s oversight board from shutting down two juvenile halls. During a board meeting Thursday, the board voted that L.A. staff return a more detailed plan of action that provides solutions for each of the issues the board has found present in the halls.

Since 2021, the Board of State and Community Corrections has found Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall and Central Juvenile Hall, two out of three juvenile halls in the county, “unsuitable for the confinement of minors,” with problems ranging from insufficient staffing to youth being confined for too long in their rooms to lack of proper training on the use-of-force policy.

The state board received a corrective plan from L.A. County on March 14. The plan, however, “does not provide enough detail about the specific plans that will be relied upon to correct the items of noncompliance and does not provide a reasonable timeframe for resolution,” according to a letter from the board to the L.A. County Probation Department’s interim chief, Karen Fletcher. Fletcher became interim chief last month after the previous department chief, Adolfo Gonzales, was fired.

During the board meeting Thursday, the board voted to grant an additional month for L.A. County to return a more detailed plan. The county will then have until mid-June to comply with the plan.

“I think the clear message is this change is going to have to be expedient, definable, measurable and inspectable,” said Linda Penner, chair of the state board.

The decision comes on the heels of a violent incident at Nidorf, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. A probation officer was stabbed Monday night by a young person housed in the hall’s unit for youth adjudicated for serious crimes such as assault and homicide.