On Tuesday, June 4, 2019, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted in favor of legislation to shutter the local juvenile hall by December 2021.
The ordinance, which SF supes authored in partnership with the Young Women’s Freedom Center (YWFC), made SF the first major urban jurisdiction to choose to abolish juvenile incarceration.
The city-county’s lone 150-bed youth lockup is already so close to empty — on August 15, 2020, there were 13 people inside — that the amount taxpayers are spending per-year, per-kid incarcerated is nearing $2 million, in a $23.5 million juvenile hall budget, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. There are often more cooks and food workers than there are kids in the hall, which has 90 staff members.