By Jason Henry
Los Angeles Daily News
LOS ANGELES — A state regulatory board has delayed its vote on whether to order yet another Los Angeles County juvenile detention facility to close.
The county found itself in the state’s crosshairs once again after it failed to obtain approval from the state fire marshal before moving the girls and gender expansive youth in its custody to Campus Vernon Kilpatrick, a remote facility in the Santa Monica Mountains, in November.
The county did not submit the redesigns of that facility to the state fire marshal until last month and was violating state law by operating it without the required fire safety sign-offs, according to Board of State and Community Corrections, the agency overseeing California’s jails and juvenile halls.
The Board of State and Community Corrections was set to declare the facility “unsuitable,” a designation that sets a 60-day deadline to either remedy the deficiencies or shutter the facility, as a result at its meeting Thursday, but it has now delayed that decision until its next meeting in June, after the county to secured a last-minute reprieve.
The state fire marshal issued a temporary certificate of occupancy the night before the meeting, giving the county two months to address a small number of fire safety issues, according the Board of State and Community Corrections.
In the interim, L.A. County is prohibited from using a newly constructed intake and reception area at that facility until the repairs are made and those services are temporarily relocated to an unused cottage on the facility’s grounds.
“Our team is already working on this,” said Vicki Waters, the L.A County Probation Department’s spokesperson.
The outstanding fire safety issues related to “a couple of windows and a door,” Waters said.
Board members expressed skepticism, due to the Board of State and Community Corrections’ constant clashes with L.A. County over the past two years, but ultimately voted to defer the suitability determination until the fire marshal finishes its review.
“Technically speaking, the fire marshal has given them clearance, and we are not in the position as a board to slice and dice the authority of the fire marshal,” said Linda Penner, chair of the Board of State and Community Corrections.
Penner, however, stressed that she would like to schedule a special meeting as soon as that review’s deadline lapses, and to immediately go after L.A. County again if it is still not in compliance.
“I have very strong convictions that I will not carry the load for L.A. for one day,” she said.
A staff report indicates the county previously told the Board of State and Community Corrections it submitted the plans for Kilpatrick to the fire marshal in January, then later revised that to March. At the meeting, Waters said there was some confusion over which fire agency had jurisdiction, prompting a rebuke from Penner.
“There was zero confusion on our part and we had conversations with L.A. County definitively talking about fire marshal approval,” Penner said.
If Kilpatrick had been declared “unsuitable,” it would become the fourth facility to receive that marker in the past three years. The Board of State and Community Corrections forced L.A. County to shut down Barry J. Nidorf and Central Juvenile halls in mid-2023 due to a persistent staffing crisis that led to dangerous and deteriorating conditions within those facilities.
Then, roughly a year later, they found Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, a facility reopened to take the populations from Nidorf and Central, unsuitable as well. The county, however, refused to comply with the order to close in that case and has continued operating Los Padrinos in defiance.
A subsequent legal battle over Los Padrinos led to a court-approved depopulation plan that would attempt to scale back the number of youths at Los Padrinos by shuffling them to other facilities, including all of the girls to Campus Kilpatrick, which at the time housed a small number of boys in a camp-like environment once championed as the model for juvenile rehabilitation in L.A. County.
L.A. County reopened Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, without the Board of State and Community Corrections’ approval, as part of the same plan. That facility is still “unsuitable” based on the 2023 determination, according to the board.
Besides the fire safety issues, a more recent inspection of Kilpatrick found that it is out of compliance in several other areas, including the same types of staffing problems that have plagued Los Padrinos and its predecessors.
Inspectors described the staffing levels at Kilpatrick as “critical,” with officers working “back-to-back 20-hour shifts with very little rest in between.” The shifts have gotten so bad that officers are limiting their food and water intake because they “don’t know if they will be relieved in order to use the restroom,” according to a report.
“The atmosphere appeared chaotic and uncontrolled/unmanaged,” the inspectors wrote.
Because that inspection is separate from the previously identified fire safety issues, the county has 60 days to submit a corrective action plan and then another 90 days after that to implement it, pushing the Board of State and Community Corrections’ potential second vote on the suitability of the facility, based on the newer deficiencies, out to September.
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