STATE PANEL OKS $40.5 MILLION FOR JUVENILE HALL

Incarceration: Corrections Board Is Urged To Approve Funds To Replace The
County's Aging Youth Detention Center.

Swayed by tales of aging facilities and overcrowded conditions, a state
committee has recommended that Ventura County receive $40.5 million to build
a new youth detention center.

Although the county has yet to purchase a site for the proposed complex, the
executive steering committee of the state Board of Corrections determined
that the county's existing juvenile facilities are too old and too dangerous
to continue housing youthful offenders.

In fact, of the more than 40 counties competing for $168 million in
available state and federal funds this year, Ventura County was rated No. 2
in terms of need, behind Contra Costa County in Northern California. Ventura
County, however, was given more money to address its problems than any other
county.

"We have tried desperately to patch the cracks," said Supervisor Kathy Long,
who served on the 10-member committee and announced its findings Monday.
"That need came across loud and clear."

The Board of Corrections is scheduled to make a final decision on the
committee's recommendation May 20, but county leaders said they fully expect
the grant to be approved.

Monday's announcement caps a nearly decade-long effort to improve the
county's deteriorating juvenile facilities. Although the nearly 60-year-old
juvenile hall has just 84 beds, it houses an average of 109 youths each day.

Judges and probation officials have long complained about the need for more
substance-abuse and mental-health treatment programs for underage offenders,
and expressed concern about the potential for violence inside the cramped
buildings.

"You can't help a kid when you put him in a facility that says, 'We don't
care,' " said Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren, one of two judges who
preside over the county's juvenile courts.

This modernization plan, he said, "is visionary, it is enlightened and it
says, 'Kids, this county cares about you and it's time you started caring
for yourself.' "

Last week, Perren and eight other county representatives traveled to
Sacramento to urge the corrections committee to set aside money for the
proposed detention center, which is expected to cost $65 million and have
space for up to 420 juvenile offenders--more than twice the number now
housed in four separate facilities.

Chief Probation Officer Cal Remington said the lobbying group worried that
the committee might frown upon their request, because the county has yet to
nail down a site for the proposed center. Although industrial properties in
El Rio and Saticoy are under consideration, no deals have been reached.

But Remington said pictures of the aging juvenile hall, with its rusty pipes
and cramped quarters, were persuasive. So were the county's statistics about
inmate overcrowding.

Those figures indicate that in 1997, juvenile hall was overcrowded on all
but one day of the year. They also show that 1,360 felony offenders were
released early because of space limitations.

In his opening comments to the committee, Remington cited a 1997 Board of
Corrections study that called juvenile hall "antiquated and inadequate from
a physical standpoint and in need of replacement."

Perren handled the closing remarks, telling the committee that it is
difficult to reform and rehabilitate young offenders in this environment.

"It is not about bricks and mortar, it is about accepting the underlying
principle of juvenile and reformative justice," he said. "Get the kid to
school and out of the gang, teach him self-respect and stop the abuse of
alcohol, marijuana and drugs ... and do all of this in a place that says the
kid has a chance, and not in an
antiquated double-bunked juvenile hall whose pipes are rotting and whose
walls crack with age."

On Monday, Remington said last week's presentation worked out well. "We
said, we're doing our best," he said, "but it's an old money pit." And a
potentially dangerous one.

With juvenile inmates living in such crowded conditions, rival gang members
often cannot be separated. County officials have long feared that such
violence could boil over into a deadly incident.

"We have a pressure-cooker situation and that makes it dangerous for them
and dangerous for our staff," said Supervisor Judy Mikels, who was been
involved in crafting the county's grant application. "It is absolutely
critical to this county that we do this now."

And the clock is ticking. The county must complete construction of the
detention center by Sept. 30, 2003, or it risks losing the state funding. In
that time, the county must identify and purchase a site, complete the
environmental review process and build the center.

"There is a lot of work in front of us," Remington said.

Counties are required to pay 10% of the cost. But Ventura County is planning
to pay much more.

Last month, county supervisors agreed to spend $23 million on the project.
The county also set aside an additional $9 million for planning and site
preparation.

The proposed detention center would be part of a larger juvenile justice
complex that officials hope to build in the next 10 years. The complex would
eventually include at least six courtrooms, expanded inmate housing and
court-related administrative offices on about 40 acres.

"It's badly needed," said Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, who said he was
delighted that the committee recommended granting the full amount of funding
the county had requested.

"It didn't happen by accident," he said. "It was the result of a lot of hard
work by a lot of people, especially Cal Remington."