By Nell Bernstein, Photo: Max Whittaker/Primitive Collection, The Imprint, August 31, 2022
Strings of fairy lights adorning fenced-in exercise yards. Bright new paint obscuring cinder block walls. “Cozy reading nooks” and starry night ceiling panels. Across California, officials are doing their best to soften the bleak interiors of county juvenile detention centers with such features and more: comfortable sofas, new gaming consoles, and scent-infused “de-escalation rooms.” Sound baffles are being installed to obscure the clanging of metal doors.
This is the new look of juvenile justice in California, as the once-massive network of state-run youth prisons lumbers toward closure in June. Already, the first rounds of young people ages 14 to 24 who committed serious offenses as minors are being returned to their home counties, where many will spend years in county juvenile detention facilities built for short-term pretrial stays.
Under a 2020 state law requiring the shift from the state to the counties, these young people are meant to be housed in “Secure Youth Treatment Facilities” that are “evidence-based, promising, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive.” They must also address young people’s “mental and emotional health, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and any disabilities or special needs” in a therapeutic environment.
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