{"id":2581,"date":"2022-08-30T23:38:35","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T06:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/?p=2581"},"modified":"2022-08-30T23:42:05","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T06:42:05","slug":"as-california-remakes-its-juvenile-justice-system-el-dorado-county-take-the-lead-on-rehabilitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/08\/30\/as-california-remakes-its-juvenile-justice-system-el-dorado-county-take-the-lead-on-rehabilitation\/","title":{"rendered":"As California Remakes Its Juvenile Justice System, El Dorado County Takes the Lead on Rehabilitation"},"content":{"rendered":"
Marisa Lagos, KQED. Img - El Dorado County Chief Probation Officer Brian Richart, pictured at the county juvenile hall on June 22, 2022.<\/pre>\n
(PLACERVILLE, CALIFORNIA) June 30, 2022 \u2014 Twenty-one-year-old Reid Butler spent about a year in one of California\u2019s state youth prisons before officials in his home county convinced a court to let him serve his sentence in a county juvenile hall. Known as the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), the state lockups were plagued by violence among youth and abuse by staff, and often meant young people were incarcerated hundreds of miles away from their families for years.<\/p>\n
On a weekday this June, Butler was chatting and working in a large room with the other 10 youths serving time in El Dorado County\u2019s juvenile hall. Most of those young people look up to Butler \u2014 he\u2019s the oldest young person incarcerated here, and he\u2019s been here the longest.<\/p>\n
Compared to DJJ, Butler said this South Lake Tahoe facility \u201cdefinitely feels very different.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHistorically speaking, the Division of Juvenile Justice is very … You could call it a cattle house, because it prunes and picks these kids to be in the system for the rest of their lives,\u201d he said. \u201cI think DJJ has tried to do a good job, but it’s very difficult when you’re sending all of your broken parts to the same place. That factory doesn’t have the tools necessary to fix those parts. Those things need to be dealt with on, like, an individual basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
By contrast, Butler said, he\u2019s made significant progress here, getting his high school diploma, then earning his associate\u2019s degree through a community college. And, he\u2019s become a model for other young people here.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s very interesting how the kids look up to me … How much respect people have for my advice, of my opinion,\u201d he said. \u201cI’ve learned through my experience that teaching somebody else helps you to learn better … when they succeed, you succeed. When you see people are happy, you’re happy because you’re putting your time and your investments into them. It’s a very nurturing environment to be a leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s exactly the culture Brian Richart, chief probation officer for El Dorado County, is looking to create as he \u2014 along with the state\u2019s 57 other counties \u2014 prepare for the end of state juvenile prisons. […]<\/p>\n
Richart said the biggest challenge now is making his outdated, decades-old juvenile hall feel less like a prison and more like a school, home and therapeutic space.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis facility was opened approximately 19-ish years ago, but in my opinion, it was designed in the older style and the older modality. So when you walk around the facility, you hear the steel doors close, you see the concrete aspects of the facility, the cinder block walls,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
El Dorado County isn\u2019t alone in this \u2014 most counties are working with similarly dated facilities. Some are being rebuilt; El Dorado County is making plans to build a new facility in Placerville. But that will take years, so in the meantime, probation departments are making small shifts to make the current buildings more livable and less prison-like. And they\u2019re focusing on what Richart sees as the most important element: staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, facilities matter, but what matters tenfold are the staff. If you see somebody in a certain way, you’ll tend to treat them that way. And if you tend to treat them that way, they will tend to behave that way,\u201d he said, adding that while the facility is a \u201climiting factor … it is certainly not something that prevents my staff from actually doing the type of family-based work that we’ve been doing for the last decade.\u201d<\/p>\n
That means staff here act more like social workers than cops; they build trust with the youth. […]<\/p>\n
In El Dorado County, Mario Guerrero was one of the community members on the local committee. He\u2019s a program manager at the nonprofit Child Advocates of El Dorado County and has worked in youth services here in his hometown county for 20 years.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said he\u2019s generally supportive of how the probation department is running juvenile justice here. But he worries about whether communities around the state will step up to help, or stand in the way. He noted that in El Dorado County, Chief Richart\u2019s proposal to build a regional facility to house and treat sex offenders from several counties was killed by the local board of supervisors.<\/p>\n
Guerrero said in order for young people to actually be rehabilitated, it\u2019s going to take a village.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor those who might be a little bit skeptical or unaware, we understand those fears,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the reality is these kids are really amazing kids. They have a lot of potential in life and they just need a lot more guidance and support to be steered in the right direction. But most of them are really, really gifted and amazing kids that just need a little bit of love to find their way.\u201d<\/p>\n
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‘You could call [DJJ] a cattle house, because it prunes and picks these kids to be in the system for the rest of their lives. I think DJJ has tried to do a good job, but it’s very difficult when you’re sending all of your broken parts to the same place.’  – Reid Butler, 21, currently serving a sentence in El Dorado County juvenile hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2584,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions\/2584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}