A year ago, Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall should have closed; here’s where it is today

One year ago, state regulators, fed up with Los Angeles County’s repeated failure to maintain minimum standards for juveniles in its custody, took the nearly unprecedented step of ordering the county’s largest juvenile hall to close its doors indefinitely until improvements could be made.

The decision, made once before in the history of that state regulatory body, came at a time when L.A. County claimed it had no alternatives left and sparked questions about what would happen to the hundreds of detainees at the time. Would potentially dangerous youth get released onto the streets? Would it jump-start long-promised, but slow-to-implement reforms to the county’s juvenile justice system?

As the anticipated closure date of Dec. 12, 2024, approached, advocates, defense attorneys and public defenders prepared hundreds of legal challenges to the continued detention of any youth within a facility deemed “unsuitable.” State law was clear that once a facility received such a designation, it must be brought back into compliance, or emptied.

But a year later, Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall not only remains open — and still unsuitable — but two other facilities repurposed as part of a court-approved plan to reduce Los Padrinos’ population are now out of compliance with state law, too.

Status quo is ‘safer’

“We have three facilities that are operating unlawfully and we haven’t reduced the total youth incarcerated in any significant way,” said Milinda Kakani, a member of the Los Angeles County Probation Oversight Commission. “It is wild to me that there has been no accountability for that.”

Kakani said the county, the Probation Department and judges have done the “bare minimum” over the past year.

“This is not at all about truly rehabilitating and supporting young people,” she said. “It seems like we have all decided to prioritize the status quo because that is safer.”

Court battle ongoing

The court battle that eventually took the lead on deciding Los Padrinos’ fate is still ongoing and isn’t expected to pick up again until mid-January. A separate attempt by the California Department of Justice to have L.A. County’s juvenile system placed under receivership is running parallel to that case, but has largely spent months working its way through witness testimony.

The staffing crisis behind nearly all of Los Padrinos’ deficiencies — in which huge swaths of the probation officers were calling out sick every day — continues, though some improvements have been made in recent months. Hundreds of probation officers, redeployed from traditional adult and juvenile probation to the juvenile halls, are still necessary to stabilize those numbers, however, and it has left those remaining in the field working overtime, nights and weekends to keep up with growing caseloads.

One field office now has just two officers handling 2,042 cases, records showed. Attempts to hire out of the crisis have been largely unsuccessful, and about two-thirds of new hires left within their first year.

As of Dec. 9, Los Padrinos had a population of 236, down from about 260 a year earlier. That’s largely attributed to the transfer of 51 youth to the two other juvenile halls. Those facilities — the reopened Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar and the reconfigured Campus Kilpatrick in Malibu — are now operating without approval from the Board of State and Community Corrections, the state regulatory board overseeing California’s jails and juvenile halls.

A depopulation plan approved by a judge in April originally set the goal of dropping Los Padrinos’ population to 175. The county Probation Department did not respond to a question asking if that is still feasible.

Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall was previously deemed unsuitable and forced to close in 2023, leading to the rapid reopening of Los Padrinos that same year. Now, about 30 youth have been sent from Los Padrinos back to Barry J. Nidorf, though it has yet to pass a new inspection.

Campus Kilpatrick, meanwhile, failed its inspection in November, the first step in a process that could result in its closure as well. It was found out of compliance for security issues, suicide hazards and the lack of approval from the state fire marshal, according to a status update sent this month by the BSCC to Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza, who is overseeing a challenge of the continued use of Los Padrinos filed by the L.A. County Public Defender’s Office.

Closure order ignored

County officials say they’re continuing to work with the BSCC, but L.A. County’s refusal to comply with the closure order for Los Padrinos — and its refusal to wait for approval before reopening Nidorf and Kilpatrick — has highlighted the board’s complete lack of teeth. The board, under the current structure, is unable to even file its own legal challenges to enforce its orders.

“The county has completely ignored not just its obligation to the state laws that set the minimal standards, but also to the young people it is charged with caring for,” Kakani said.

Vicky Waters, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Probation Department, said Campus Kilpatrick is “compliant with local fire and life-safety requirements” and that the current issue is an “administrative State Fire Marshal approval tied to updated facility use plans” related to the decision to shift Kilpatrick from an existing facility housing about 20 young men to one now used exclusively for girls and gender-expansive youth.

“Probation is actively working with the State Fire Marshal, the County’s Internal Services Department, BSCC, and other partners to complete the required plan reviews,” Waters said.

County making progress

Waters said the county is reducing the population at Los Padrinos, while prioritizing youth safety, continuity of care, programming, safety and family connections. Those reductions have been “paired with carefully planned transfers to ensure youth are moved to settings that better align with their needs and available services,” she said.

“Stabilizing staffing has also been a central priority,” Waters said. “Over the past year, Probation has taken steps to improve deployment, increase supervisory coverage, and strengthen accountability, recognizing that safe and effective facilities depend on consistent staffing.”

These aren’t short-term fixes, Waters said, but part of a broader effort to “modernize juvenile operations, improve conditions for youth and staff, and deliver a system that is safer, more accountable, and better aligned with its rehabilitative mission.”

In a statement, the unions representing deputy probation officers and probation supervisors acknowledged that there have been “some improvements over the past year, but significant challenges remain.”

“Staffing callouts are down, which has helped bring a greater degree of stability to daily operations and reduced the strain on employees who have continued to report to work under difficult circumstances,” the statement reads. “In addition, a number of security enhancements have been implemented. These improvements have contributed to better control of the facility and a safer working environment than existed at the height of the crisis.”

Staff consistency needed

But Los Padrinos is “still not where it needs to be,” according to the unions.

“The most significant ongoing issue is the lack of permanent, fully staffed institutional teams and comparatively low pay makes recruitment a challenge,” the statement reads. “The facility continues to rely too heavily on temporary assignments and reassigned staff, which undermines consistency, training, accountability, and long-term operational effectiveness.”

Meaningful progress will “require sustained investment in permanent staffing, consistent leadership and operational systems that support staff rather than stretch them beyond capacity,” according to the unions. “Until those issues are addressed, improvements will remain limited and fragile.”

Though the county claims it is meeting staffing requirements, it has not asked the BSCC to reinspect Los Padrinos since April, even though passing a new inspection would put an end to at least one of the two ongoing legal battles. About 8% of the staff scheduled to work from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6 called out, according to the department.

‘Alarming levels of violence’

An inspection by the Probation Oversight Commission in August identified “continued alarming levels of violence” at Los Padrinos affecting both youth and staff. The authors concluded that two years after it opened, the juvenile hall still lacked a “functional rehabilitation framework” with gaps in education, barriers to visitation, and burned-out staff. More than a third of internal medical appointments were still missed “as a direct result of inadequate Probation staffing.”

Of 600 grievances received from youth, the majority related to “safety and treatment of youth” and that had increased remarkably from prior years, according to the report.

“Multiple grievances included explicit requests from youth to be moved to different units due to fights, fear, and complaints of “pack-outs” — a term referring to a fight where one victim is attacked by a group of individuals all at the same time — and “expressions of mental distress and the development of mental health symptoms,” the report stated.

Earlier this year, 30 probation employees were indicted for allegedly staging “gladiator fights” at the facility. The county paid out a $2.7 million settlement to one of the youth involved and now faces additional legal claims and lawsuits from others drawn into the fights.

The problems at Los Padrinos have seemingly carried over to Barry J. Nidorf as well. Members of the Board of Supervisors recently expressed concerns about the lack of programming available to those moved to the facility from Los Padrinos.

During a court hearing in November, Brett Peterson, who serves as the deputy monitor overseeing compliance with a court-approved settlement agreement between the state Department of Justice and L.A. County, testified that youth were forced to urinate in plastic bags and gloves because there was not enough staff to escort them from their rooms to the restroom overnight.

Those exact issues were previously reported at Los Padrinos and at Barry J. Nidorf before it was closed in 2023.

‘Greater sense of urgency’

Though his testimony was at times critical, Peterson also praised the department’s leadership for more recent progress and for a “greater sense of urgency” since the push for a receivership began.

Eduardo Mundo, a former probation officer who serves as chair of the Probation Oversight Commission, said the department has done a good job of getting staff to work, but he doesn’t believe the system, as it stands, will improve without more dramatic changes, particularly in the way that charges are handled against juveniles.

“The system is so broken,” he said.

Battles over the application of three-strikes laws and enhancements against juveniles increase the length of court cases and keep more youth inside Los Padrinos and elsewhere for longer. About a third of those in Los Padrinos have cases that have dragged out for a year or even more, he said.

The county’s juvenile halls are not designed for such long stays. Los Padrinos, built in 1957, doesn’t have the stability or spaces necessary to provide the type of long-term services and educational programming, like technical skills training, that will help youth stay out of the system in the future, he said.

“We’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole,” he said, “and it’s just not going to happen.”