Los Angeles County on Tuesday approved sweeping restrictions on the use of solitary confinement for juvenile detainees, joining a larger movement against a practice that some consider cruel and unproductive.
The Board of Supervisors' action bans solitary confinement at youth camps and halls except “as a temporary response to behavior that poses a serious and immediate risk of physical harm to any person.”
In those cases, the supervisors said, the isolation should be only for a brief “cooling off” period and should be done in consultation with a mental health professional.
In recent years, 19 states and the District of Columbia have ended the solitary isolation for minors. New York City went one step further and banned solitary confinement for Rikers Island inmates up to age 21.
President Obama earlier this year announced that he would ban solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons, but the move was largely symbolic. At the time just 26 people under age 18 were in federal custody.
The practice has been widespread in Los Angeles County. A recent report showed that 43% of the youths at Camp Scudder in Santa Clarita had spent more than 24 hours in solitary confinement. The department did not release the reasons behind the placements.
The use of solitary confinement increased between 2014 and 2015, particularly in the juvenile halls, where the number of referrals to restrictive housing units increased from 2,775 to 4,396, according to Felicia Cotton, the deputy probation chief overseeing juvenile facilities. She attributed the increase in part to the higher-risk profile of youths housed in the lockups as more low-level juvenile offenders have been diverted.
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