May 03--Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday approved severe restrictions on the use of solitary confinement for juvenile offenders, part of a larger movement away from a practice that many consider cruel and unproductive.
The Board of Supervisors' action bans solitary confinement at youth camps and other facilities except "as a temporary response to behavior that poses a serious and immediate risk of physical harm to any person."
In those cases, the supervisors said, the isolation should be only for a brief "cooling-off" period, and should be done in consultation with a mental health professional.
In pushing for the shift, Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl cited studies that have found solitary confinement "can cause lasting physical and psychological harm and actually increase recidivism without any benefit to public safety."
In recent years, 19 states and the District of Columbia have ended the practice of punishing detainees younger than 18 by isolating them. New York City went one step further and banned solitary confinement for Rikers Island inmates up to age 21. President Obama earlier this year announced that he would ban solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons, but the move was largely symbolic. At the time there were only 26 people under the age of 18 in federal custody.
In Los Angeles County, the practice has been widespread. A recent report showed that 43% of the youths at Camp Scudder in Santa Clarita spent more than 24 hours in solitary confinement. The department did not release the reasons behind the placements or the mental health conditions of those affected.
According to Los Angeles County's Probation Department handbook, guards can send inmates to solitary confinement for "readjustment or administrative purposes" or to monitor them for mental health issues. The purpose, it says, is "to maintain order, safety and security."
At Tuesday's board meeting, several former juvenile inmates urged the board to take action against the practice.
Francisco Martines, 22, said he spent six weeks in solitary confinement at age 17. He recalled a freezing room with dirty walls and a torn mattress. The cold air triggered an ashtma attack, he said, and he had to wait for medical care.
"It was horrible, like an animal in a cage," Martines said.
Alex Sanchez, a gang member turned intervention worker who heads the group Homies Unidos, had similar memories of his time in county juvenile lockups. "I remember in Camp Gonzales, I tried to break my finger...just to get out of isolation," he said.
Interim Probation Chief Cal Remington said the department has already reduced its reliance on placing youth in restrictive housing, although statistics were not immediately available. The move away from the practice began while the county's juvenile facilities were under enhanced monitoring by the Department of Justice.
The oversight ended last year after the department made a series of required reforms. Mental health professionals are now notified whenever a child is sent to an isolated unit, and a supervisor must check on the youth within two hours and make a decision about whether to release him or her, Remington said.
"We don't use it for punishment or discipline so much as sometimes you have to separate the kids," he said. For instance, last weekend a fight broke out involving 17 youths at one of the lockups.
The new rules will first take effect at the Central Juvenile Hall and camps McNair and Scott this month, and are to be rolled out at the other facilities by the end of September. The isolation units, known as "special housing units," should be converted to other uses, which could include turning them into so-called "cooling-down" areas. The county's three juvenile halls and 13 camps hold about 1,200 youths.
The written policy does not specify how long youths can be confined under those solitary circumstances.
Despite the caveats, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said the board is not trying to do "solitary confinement 'lite.'" "The thrust of the motion is to eliminate the practice," he said.
Earlier this year in Sacramento, state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) reintroduced a bill that would seek to greatly limit the use of solitary confinement for juveniles.
The bill died at the committee level last year before reaching the full Legislature. It was the fourth consecutive year that the effort failed.
