The state attorney general's office is looking into hundreds of dubious arrests at California's shelters for abused and neglected children that were detailed last week in a San Francisco Chronicle investigative report.

ACounty officials have called for immediate reviews of the newspaper's findings that shelter staff contacted the sheriff an average of nine times a day last year, with children booked at juvenile hall nearly 200 times in 2015 and 2016.

The county shelters are the first stop for children removed from their homes by social workers, and for those in between placements in the nation's largest foster care system. Yet instead of serving as refuges for children, The Chronicle found the shelters often call law enforcement to quell their emotional outbursts an extreme reaction that can have lasting impacts on youngsters handcuffed and booked at juvenile halls.

One answer to this problem is to close the shelters, said Patrick Tondreau, presiding judge of the Santa Clara County Juvenile Court, who chairs a statewide task force studying foster youth who cross over into the juvenile justice system.

Every effort needs to be made by everyone at all levels not to transition these kids to a delinquency system, Tondreau said. They have been seriously traumatized, and it is natural for them to react with anger. Using law enforcement in most of these situations is taking the lazy way out.

To read more of Karen de Sa,  Joaquin Palomino, and Cynthia Dizikes' article, please click here.