Published by The Imprint
In the days since the news broke that Los Angeles County had agreed to pay $4 billion to nearly 7,000 people who were victims of sexual abuse while locked in juvenile detention facilities or child welfare group homes, my phone has not stopped buzzing with texts from women I love – women I’ve survived with, built with and fought alongside for decades.
Until the culture in Los Angeles County’s youth justice system changes, the violence and trauma will continue. More than 50 girls are still incarcerated at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles despite the fact that the county’s own risk assessment tool shows that 99 percent of those arrested for the first time could safely be released and the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in 2023 to work toward ending the incarceration of girls and gender expansive youth entirely. When the county re-opened Los Padrinos, after the Board of State and Community Corrections found its two other juvenile halls unfit for habitation in 2023, the probation department called the move a “bold new plan to reset probation’s juvenile hall operations” and “change from a detention approach to a therapeutic Behavior Health Model.” But in December 2024, the Board of State and Community Corrections determined that Los Padrinos also was unsafe for youth.
