|
|
CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM |
|
||
| www.cjcj.org |
| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 1622 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
One thing you can say for San Francisco is that it's consistent. Reason never gets in the way of a good argument.
That explains how the city may end up 18 beds short of an easy fix for the deplorable Youth Guidance Center, a place long on dreams and short on hope. San Francisco has a chance to replace its archaic, 50-year-old juvenile hall at reasonable cost -- except that a handful of social crusaders have decided they know what's best for dealing with the city's troubled youth. Four years ago, San Francisco and other California counties were encouraged to apply for a federal grant to rebuild their juvenile detention centers. The state had found that emergency conditions existed in juvenile justice programs, and money was set aside to rejuvenate detention halls in 42 of the 52 counties in California that have them.
"In the last 30 years, almost no juvenile halls have been built across the state, because the funding just wasn't there," said Eugene Clendinen, fiscal director of Mayor Willie Brown's Criminal Justice Council. "So this is a prime opportunity for the city to rebuild a facility that everyone agrees needs to be replaced."
For San Francisco, the $15 million grant was manna from heaven, since voters are not keen on taxing themselves to build jails, and several bond measures to fund a new juvenile hall had failed to receive the nearly impossible two-thirds majority. Now, it seemed, the city would be able to scrape together enough to replace a facility that had been called inhumane, unsafe and inadequate by the civil grand jury, the state's Little Hoover Commission and almost anyone who visited the place.
But like so many things in San Francisco, it turned out to be too good to be true.
The federal funding carried with it a mandate that for counties to receive the money, what they built would have to be bigger than what they had now. San Francisco proposed a 150-bed center to replace its decrepit 132-bed juvenile hall.
The 18-bed increase paled in comparison to other plans around the state. Los Angeles County proposed adding 341 beds. Alameda County originally planned to add 250 beds to a new juvenile detention complex in Dublin -- but when critics said the building would be too big and too far from the county's largest cities, the supervisors relented and agreed to a much smaller facility.
The proposed increase in San Francisco was so small it figured to receive minimal opposition. But as they say in public policy debates around town, go figure.
Groups like the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and Coleman Advocates for Youth and Children maintain (through the official voice of Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval) that any increase would encourage juvenile justice workers to incarcerate more troubled youngsters. This falls under the "if you build it, they will come" theory of life, but it flies in the face of the evidence in San Francisco's reform-minded juvenile program.
For starters, the average population at the Youth Guidance Center in 2001 was 115, well below capacity. In the past few weeks, the average has hovered between 95 and 100. In addition, the city began a Juvenile Detention Alternative program last year designed to use less restrictive measures for youths who aren't considered a threat to themselves or others.
What's more, the current and past stewards of the juvenile court system, Judges Katherine Feinstein, Kevin McCarthy and Donna Hutchens, have used juvenile hall only as a last resort and have been dedicated to trying to help troubled kids.
So while everyone agrees that the city desperately needs a new Youth Guidance Center, opponents of the slightly expanded building have suggested that the city construct only a 72- or 80-bed facility. The only problem with that grand scheme is that the city would lose the $15 million grant. That, in turn, means it would cost the city $42 million to build a smaller juvenile hall instead of the $27 million it would spend to build the larger detention center. Clearly, this is a case where less is not more.
"The position of the opponents so far is that any expansion is unnecessary," said Jesse Williams Jr., chief juvenile probation officer. "But what they fail to take into account is the reality of funding a new facility."
It would be pure fiscal folly for San Francisco to kiss off $15 million at a time when it is badly strapped for cash. The design of the new Youth Guidance Center is nearly complete, and construction must be finished by the fall of 2005 for the city to meet the grant requirements.
When the supervisors take up the financing question in a few weeks, they should remember that when their predecessors on the board asked for the grant a few years back, they had the full support of the advocacy groups now serving as obstacles to the project.
Instead of blocking a new center that is desperately needed, the youth advocates should be pushing for more services, expanded reading programs, health care and counseling. And if there is unused space in the new Youth Guidance Center, the city can use it to provide more educational services like the writing program the Beat Within, an expanded library or more outreach programs like those offered by the Omega Boys Club.
This is no time for the city to be bickering over beds -- not when 18 of them could cost San Francisco $15 million. If that happens, there will be a lot of sleepless nights for the city's youth advocates. And a lot of suffering kids.
| This site and its contents © 2002 Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice |