Juvenile Hall Getting Help at Long Last : $12.7-Million Project Would Ease Space, Deterioration Woes

Bill Bean doesn’t like to make kids sleep on floors. But he hasn’t got much choice.

As superintendent of San Diego County’s Juvenile Hall, Bean faces a vexing problem: more inmates than beds. That means dozens of children must sack out each night on thin mattresses laid on the detention facility’s concrete floor.

“There’s at least one kid--usually more--sleeping on the floor somewhere in this place every night,” Bean lamented recently. “At the beginning of this week, we had 250 kids and 219 beds to put them in. . . . I don’t think that’s right.”

The problem isn’t a new one. Ten years ago, a county grand jury report called accommodations at the hall “totally unacceptable,” while the Board of Supervisors described crowding at the facility as “a crisis.”

But somehow, Juvenile Hall was bumped down the county’s priority list through the years, and funds for an expansion have simply never been approved. The cramped conditions have persisted, and the deteriorating state of the building has grown worse.

Expansion and Renovation

Now relief is in sight. After years of lobbying, the county Probation Department has won preliminary approval for a $12.7-million project that will create a new 120-bed unit and give the dilapidated existing building a badly needed face lift.

Officials say the help will arrive none too soon.

In addition to the crowding woes, they say, the 33-year-old Juvenile Hall is riddled with problems that weaken the structure’s security, pose the threat of injury to its inmates and require expensive ongoing repairs. Leaky roofs force probation officers to evacuate some rooms--and lose beds--during rainy periods, and there are rusty shower stalls, windows corroded by years of abuse and doors sagging on their hinges.

The facility lacks air conditioning, making for uncomfortable living and high tension during the heat of summer, and a temperamental sewage system recently backed up and saddled the hall with a stubborn fly infestation.

Overall, the low-slung building off California 163 in Kearny Mesa is a drab, depressing place in serious need of some sprucing up.

Final OK Needed

“A kid in a society as affluent as ours should not be forced to sleep on the floor,” said Probation Director Burton Johnson, who is supervising the expansion and renovation project. “When society demands we lock someone up, it’s incumbent upon us that we provide a humane environment, not a debilitating one.”

Although final funding approval by the Board of Supervisors is yet to come, the Probation Department is already mapping out details of the construction and renovation with its architects. Construction is scheduled to begin early next spring and will take about a year.

The biggest part of the budget will finance a new 120-bed wing immediately to the north of the existing hall, which sits in the shadow of Juvenile Court on the county’s 32.2-acre lot on Meadowlark Drive.

In keeping with the latest techniques in juvenile-detention facility construction, the new 36,350-square-foot wing will be in the shape of a cloverleaf to provide easy viewing down short hallways from a central guard’s desk.

Brightly Colored Plastic

Johnson has proposed that the rooms be furnished with brightly colored, heavy-duty plastic furniture popular in Canada’s corrections system, rather than the Army-style steel beds found in the hall today. The durable plastic furniture has a homelike feel and smooth, contoured corners that reduce the risk of injury--whether accidental or self-inflicted.

Renovation of the original building will include reroofing as well as reflooring with a vinyl material--a surface far preferable to the worn, chipped concrete now in place.

Air conditioning will be added and the entire ventilation system shifted from below ground to the roof; the sewage and water piping will be replaced. Existing windows--now somewhat vulnerable because of years of wear and abuse--will be replaced, and separate entrances will be created for incoming youths, visitors and suppliers.

Finally, under a project funded in part by Volunteers in Probation Inc., both the new and old buildings will be painted in colors designed to trigger favorable psychological responses from the young detainees.

Johnson said the hues are selected based on research indicating that environment has a great impact on emotional stability. Certain combinations of color and light theoretically can induce positive behavior and reduce the incidence of violence and aggression.

Letter to Supervisors

As those who work at Juvenile Hall see it, the expansion and renovation are long overdue. A decade ago, nearly half of the 91 probation officers then stationed at the hall sent county supervisors a letter decrying health and security conditions at the facility.

In addition to concerns about children sleeping on the floor and two to a room, the officers cited occasions on which youths were forced to go two to four days without a change of underwear as vivid examples of how acute crowding and related problems had become.

Soon after, the board agreed that troubles had escalated to the “crisis” point and temporarily shifted some youths to two outlying camp facilities.

But the population remained high, and criticism flowed next from the grand jury, which issued a report in July, 1978, attacking conditions at both Juvenile Hall and the County Jail downtown for adults.

“There is little evidence of goals or objectives having been established, particularly in the Probation Department, concerning incarceration facility planning,” the grand jury’s report said. The county is operating on a “react rather than act basis,” it said.

State Pressure Increased

A year later, state officials--who had been citing the Probation Department for non-compliance with population limits off and on for several years--stepped up their pressure on the county. In an unprecedented action, the California Youth Authority sued the department to force local authorities to limit the number of youths housed in the hall.

CYA officials who inspect San Diego facilities could not be reached for comment. But Cecil Steppe, the county’s chief probation officer, said the state “backed off the lawsuit” in the early 1980s.

“What they wanted to see was a corrective action plan that showed we were serious about doing something about the population problem in a reasonable time frame,” Steppe said. “They don’t expect us to be in compliance every day. There are always bulges in our population, so we can’t.”

In fact, Juvenile Hall’s population has exceeded its rated capacity of 219 almost every day in the past four years, said Bean, the superintendent, adding that the last time a child did not sleep on the floor was during the Christmas holiday season.

Second-Worst in State

In 1986, CYA statistics show, crowding at the San Diego facility was far worse than at any other similar facility in the state, except at Juvenile Hall in Madera County, north of Fresno. In November, 1986, for example, the average population in San Diego’s juvenile hall was 336.

“We’ve had times in recent years when the population hit 400 and we still had only 219 beds,” said Michael Specht, a spokesman for the Probation Department. “The CYA keeps sending us notices about it, but what are they going to do, shut down Juvenile Hall?”

Probation officials say the crowding problem is at the root of numerous other troubles plaguing the hall, which has seven units for boys (including one high-security ward for those accused of violent or more serious crimes), one for girls and a special long-term rehabilitation section for girls. Bean said that housing youths between the ages of 8 and 17 two to a room creates a tense mood that often escalates into violence.

“Without looking at the numbers, I can tell which units were overcrowded just by looking at the physical contact reports that come across my desk,” Bean said. “There is more aggression in units without a lot of space. You get more peer problems. Horseplay starts and then it erupts into a mutual combat situation. These kids are locked up. That does something to people. For some 13-year-olds, that’s a traumatic experience.”

Attacks Grow Worse

Crowding also increases the risk of sexual assaults among the young offenders, and attacks on staff members invariably rise when the population mushrooms, Bean said. Employee morale is another casualty of the crowding and deterioration problems.

“It makes me depressed to see a kid sleeping on the floor, because there’s just no excuse for it,” Johnson said. “As for the maintenance problems, they make staff feel as if no one gives a damn about the place and therefore don’t give a damn about them. So then the staff tends to care less about the people, the kids, in here.”

Over the years, Probation Department officials have used various measures to keep the population at the hall low. Bean said efforts to divert juveniles from a stay at the facility begin with the police officer, who uses discretion in the field and can choose to simply return a child home if the crime is not serious.

Officials often keep runaway children out of the hall by turning them over to a nonprofit community organization that contracts with the county to provide beds and find short-term foster homes for the youths, Bean said.

Home Supervision Tack

Another successful alternative to incarceration is home supervision. Under this program, used for about 80 children at any one time, a probation officer monitors a child in the home, keeping close track of his or her progress in school and with family members.

An innovative program launched early this year after months of negotiations with Mexican authorities allows county officials to ship some Mexican juveniles across the border for handling by the government there. Bean said that on average, the Juvenile Hall population included about 30 Mexican aliens accused of crimes.

“Now we’re down to about seven, and that’s a significant decrease in terms of costs and space they were taking up,” Bean said. Last year, the county spent as much as $1.4 million on Mexican juveniles in custody.

Juvenile Court judges also heavily influence the population at the hall, and have attempted in recent years to keep a close watch on the numbers as they make decisions on a youth’s fate. Presiding Juvenile Court Judge Sheridan Reed--who has been through the hall when “there were three mattresses in a room designed for one child”--said the court set up a task force last year that studied the crowding problem and recommended ways to control the population until new beds are available.

“We used to place kids there for a short stay designed to show them what life there is like,” Reed said. “It was effective, but we simply don’t have the space to do it anymore. Juvenile Hall is now nothing but an acute detention facility.”

Early Release Used

Last fall and early this year, the court authorized the early release of about 75 youths from Rancho del Rayo in Campo. That freed up Juvenile Hall beds occupied by minors waiting for their turn at the detention camp, Reed said, adding that the court also has increased its use of the home supervision program to create more space.

“Releasing kids early and placing some who should be in the hall on home supervision are not choices we like to make,” Reed said. “But with the kind of intolerable overcrowding we’ve been seeing, they’re choices we’ve had to make.”

Just as a new lane on a busy freeway is quickly clogged with cars, the new beds at Juvenile Hall likely will be occupied the moment they’re ready, Probation Department officials concede. Still, it is unlikely that any further expansion will take place in Kearny Mesa. What land remains is needed for playing fields and exercise areas, and with residential development occuring mostly outside of central San Diego, new facilities would more logically be located elsewhere.

“I see us moving toward a regional juvenile justice center in North County,” Steppe said. “That’s where all the growth is. In addition to a Juvenile Hall, we would also need a Juvenile Court. It wouldn’t make sense to transport people from Vista or wherever down here for their appearances.”