With the ghost of youth-inmate beatings still haunting Santa
Clara County
’s Juvenile Hall, voters will get to choose whether to switch
oversight of the facility from the county’s Superior Court to the
Board of Supervisors.
With the ghost of youth-inmate beatings still haunting Santa Clara County’s Juvenile Hall, voters will get to choose whether to switch oversight of the facility from the county’s Superior Court to the Board of Supervisors.
The question will appear on the March 2, 2004 ballot, supervisors unanimously decided Nov. 25.
“The Board of Supervisors is committed to fundamental change in the way juvenile detention is handled in Santa Clara County,” said Supervisor Blanca Alvarado (District 2, San Jose), who chairs both the board as a whole and the county’s Juvenile Detention Reform Committee, formed in response to the public furor over the allegations of brutality. “Ensuring accountability in the management of Juvenile Hall is at the heart of the juvenile justice initiatives currently under way.”
The Board of Supervisors currently sets the budget for the county Juvenile Probation Department, which runs the 290-bed San Jose detention facility and several youth ranches, but the Superior Court oversees it and has the authority to hire, manage and fire its chief. The ballot measure would give supervisors this authority over the chief and establish an advisory board to help supervisors run the facility.
Superior Court judges were dissatisfied with the decision and said supervisors won’t be able to run Juvenile Hall any better than the court did.
Supervisors claim that oversight in public meetings by publicly elected officials is a much-needed improvement and opens the door to further reforms.
The county has taken heavy criticism since the alleged beatings of about two dozen young men since 1994 became public earlier this year. Some staff reportedly slammed boys’ heads against walls, broke bones or knocked inmates unconscious.
Beginning in February, the U.S. Department of Justice investigated Juvenile Hall. The Board of Supervisors, in turn, hired its own auditor, David Roush, a criminal justice professor at Michigan State University. Roush returned his scathing report in August, saying he had witnessed abuse of a 13-year-old, 70-pound boy in handcuffs by seven staff members. In general, he said, his week at the Hall did not show systematic abuse but indicated a culture more akin to an adult prison than a reformative facility for juveniles. His 30 recommendations included overhauling the Probation Department’s leadership structure.
On Oct. 28, John Cavalli retired suddenly after six years as county probation chief and 37 years in the field of youth justice. Members of the Santa Clara County Probation Peace Officers Union, which vocally opposed the reform strategy, had considered a no-confidence vote in Cavalli.
