County Considers New Probation Watchdog Group

The Board of Supervisors took a step Tuesday toward revamping oversight of the Probation Department, a shift that could ultimately include a citizens oversight commission.

Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Mark Ridley-Thomas proposed a working group to evaluate the need for a new watchdog commission and look at whether juvenile and adult probation should be handled separately.

Calling the system of internal and external checks in place -- which for years included the Department of Justice -- “a chaotic blend of oversight,” Kuehl said the proposal “continues a trend ... to transparency.”

The department is currently advised and monitored by a web of agencies, including the Sybil Brand Commission, Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Committee and the Probation Commission, though none has comprehensive authority.

Ridley-Thomas said he wanted the department to return to its “fundamental mission” of rehabilitation.

“If we claim to be concerned about young people, particularly youth at risk ... we have an obligation ... to engage in rehabilitation,” Ridley-Thomas said.

The move comes as the board searches for a new chief probation officer.

Turnover at the top of the organization over the past several years “has created a kind of whiplash,” Kuehl said.

Cal Remington has stepped in as interim probation chief, a role he also filled in 2011, bookending the tenure of Jerry Powers, whose resignation was effective Jan. 4.

Remington said the department was committed to more transparency.

“This is one way to do that,” Remington said, before noting that “the devil is in the details.”

Saying he had surveyed departments thoughout California, Remington seemed to anticipate an independent commission when he added, “No one has this type of oversight for probation, so we will be the first.”

The board has established a Citizens Oversight Commission to monitor the Sheriff’s Department and advocates seemed to anticipate a similar outcome for the Probation Department, urging the board to include community members in the process.

Some called for probationers to be included in the discussion about what changes are needed.

“Once you get used to locking a young person up in a cage, it becomes normal to you,” Tanisha Denard of the Youth Justice Coalition told the board.

Denard, who was put on probation after fighting at school and sent to a juvenile hall, said that even though she wasn’t on lockdown, she was confined overnight from 8 or 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. in a 5- by 10-foot room with “no books or writing materials ... just you, your thoughts and the screams or crying” of other probationers.

She had to take showers in an uncurtained area with male staff walking by and was sometimes “forced to pee on the floor on into a towel or a blanket.” Though air conditioning was set at “full blast,” extra blankets were considered contraband.

Supervisor Hilda Solis thanked Denard for sharing her story and later issued a statement saying things need to change.

“From my personal experiences visiting our juvenile halls, I have seen a deeply ingrained culture within the department that treats these children as future criminals rather than as traumatized kids,” Solis said.

Others saw the board’s move as part of a broader public policy shift.

“There’s a climate shift ... in criminal juvenile justice reform” from a “punitive system” to one focusing on rehabilitation,” said Alex Johnson, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund-California.

That shift includes Gov. Jerry Brown’s push to overhaul sentencing laws, the White House ban on solitary confinement for youth in federal prisons and a Supreme Court ruling that life sentences for juvenile offenders are unconstitutional.

Supervisor Michael Antonovich asked that the working group’s analysis include a fiscal review of the existing oversight bodies, saying he hoped to eliminate redundancies in oversight.

Diana Zuniga of Californians United for a Responsible Budget also focused on the numbers, noting that the department controls millions of dollars in funding for community-based alternatives to incarceration and other youth programming.

There have been more than eight audits of the department over the past year-and-a-half, according to Ridley-Thomas, who said the audits “made it abundantly clear to me that we have some systemic issues to address.”

The board’s vote was unanimous.

A report back is expected in 90 days.

--City News Service, photo via Shutterstock