S.F. JUVENILE HALL BRACES FOR DETAINEE SURGE

The population of San Francisco's juvenile hall is likely to spike
now that the city has reversed its policy of shielding juvenile
illegal immigrants convicted of felonies from federal immigration
officials, city officials said Thursday.

And the undocumented youths are likely to see the length of their
stays in detention increase dramatically as the juvenile probation
department faces fewer alternatives to locking them up. At least one
city official warned that many of the teenagers could be detained for
a year or more.

Controversy over the number of youths locked up at juvenile hall
erupted last spring when children's advocates criticized Mayor Gavin
Newsom and his handpicked Chief Probation Officer William Siffermann
for allowing the number of incarcerated youths to rise to 156, a 30-year high.

That was more than the maximum capacity of 150 at the new Youth
Guidance Center near Twin Peaks, and city officials promised during
the facility's construction that the beds would never be filled.
Siffermann was hired by Newsom in 2005 in large part because he had
cut the size of the juvenile hall population in Chicago.

After the complaints, Newsom promptly ordered the number in San
Francisco reduced and issued an executive order demanding reform in
the city's juvenile justice system. The number of incarcerated youths
immediately went down to 128. As of Thursday, it was at 119.

Reverse of Decrease Likely

Those numbers are likely to go back up now that the Juvenile
Probation Department has run out of other ways to handle illegal
immigrant youths picked up for felonies, Siffermann said Thursday in
an interview with The Chronicle.

"We now have fewer options. We can't move them out," Siffermann said.
"I anticipate the population of the hall will increase."

On Sunday The Chronicle revealed that San Francisco was shielding
Honduran youths convicted of dealing crack cocaine from possible
federal deportation as part of its policy to be a sanctuary city for
undocumented immigrants. Since mid-2006, the city has spent $18,951
to fly them back home.

After federal law enforcement authorities demanded that the flights
be stopped, the city instead sent the youths to long-term
rehabilitation centers in Southern California, where eight of them ran away.

Newsom said Wednesday that the city would stop the practice and would
promptly hand over any illegal immigrants convicted of felonies,
regardless of age.

"We are committed to not returning any youth to their countries of
origin, and we are committed to not placing any more of the
undocumented youth in out-of-home placement," Siffermann said, noting
that most of them have no parents in this country to return to.

On Thursday, 22 undocumented youths were at the hall - nearly a fifth
of the total population there. Siffermann met for an hour Thursday
morning with officials from the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement office to develop protocols for how the city will deal
with undocumented youths in the future. That includes deciding when
immigration officials will be told that the city has detained a
juvenile felon, said Nathan Ballard, press secretary for Newsom.

Ballard said the policy of shielding undocumented youths was not
connected to the city's efforts to lower the number of youths at juvenile hall.

"We have halted the practice of putting undocumented immigrants on
planes, and now we have to deal with reality," Ballard said. "It's
still a priority to get juveniles who deserve treatment into
appropriate rehabilitation instead of languishing at juvenile hall."

In San Francisco, alternatives to locking them up include home
detention with electronic ankle monitors, a stay at a group home,
mandatory check-ins at four city-funded nonprofit centers that are
open from 3 to 9 p.m. daily, and participation in community programs
that offer mentors and counseling.

National research shows that finding alternatives to incarceration
and stressing rehabilitation lowers the likelihood youths will commit
more crimes, improves chances they'll stay in school and saves tax dollars.

But none of those options appear viable for illegal immigrant youths
charged with felonies in San Francisco. Omar Khalif, the ombudsman
for the Juvenile Probation Department, said more and more illegal
immigrants have been held at the hall - and the numbers will keep
climbing despite the pressure to get them down.

'A Catch-22'

"The numbers are going to go up - they almost have to when you've got
hard-to-place kids," Khalif said. "It's going to be a catch-22 no
matter how you shape it."

Public defender Jeff Adachi said he expects to see the numbers "rise
exponentially." He also said illegal immigrants are likely to see
their stays increase dramatically because they will be held from the
time of arrest to the time of their sentence, and then if found
guilty, until ICE officials take them away and detain them longer in
federal facilities before deportation. He said youth could be
detained a year or longer in total.

Barry Krisberg is the president of the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency, a criminal justice research and policy organization in
Oakland. He said that if the political will is there, alternatives
can still be found. He said there are government-approved placement
centers, including one in Pleasanton, where San Francisco could send
undocumented teenagers.

"The problem can be solved, and the idea that somehow this is going
to inevitably lead to an overcrowded juvenile hall is just simply
factually incorrect," he said.

Ana Perez, director of the Central American Resource Center in the
Mission District, which works with immigrant families, said city
officials seem to be missing the point. Why, she asked, are youths
from Honduras leaving their countries and families behind to come to
San Francisco to deal crack?

"I'm worried that we haven't done enough to figure out who these kids
are, why they're coming, whether they've been victims of crimes in
their home countries or here," she said. "They're criminals, but
they're also children."