Puzzling decline in juvenile inmate numbers

The number of children held at Sonoma County’s juvenile hall has dropped to its lowest level since the $60 million facility opened four years ago, reversing an initial surge and puzzling officials.

In October, the average number of youths age 12 to 18 in the hall was 74, about half the capacity of 140. The highest number was 110 in December 2006.

When the hall was built to replace an aging and widely criticized facility, juvenile justice officials feared a surge then in youth arrests might even require further expansion.

Officials are unsure what’s caused the drop in inmates, saying it could be because of an overall decline in crime, changes in court policy and programs and even the slumping economy, which could be forcing families with children to move to more affordable counties.

Whether the decline is part of a long trend or just a statistical blip remains to be seen.

“We’re all just thankful that we’re not bursting at the seams and that it’s going down,” said Robert Ochs, Sonoma County’s probation chief in charge of juvenile hall. “We think some of the things we’re doing have an impact, but we can’t prove it.”

The decline is a turnaround from what happened in the first year after the Los Guilucos Road facility opened in November 2005. The average daily number of inmates climbed 34 percent in the first 12 months, prompting officials to enlist the help of a consultant who was studying Sonoma County jail crowding.

At one time, juvenile officials were considering whether they might need more beds, but concern since has waned with the declining population, Ochs said.

“I had a concern about what was going to happen,” Ochs said. “Over time, it got less so.”

Now, the hall appears to have ample space.

The old juvenile hall was most crowded in 1999 and 2000, nearing capacity. In 2001, a riot and escape attempt contributed to public pressure to build a facility conducive to monitoring and counseling.

The number of youth inmates fell over the next several years until the new building opened.

Today, officials operate with just six of the facility’s seven 20-person housing units and have enough extra beds to separate gang rivals and other teenagers who could cause problems.

The minimum-security Housing Unit No. 7 was at about half capacity last week as youths worked on an environmental mural project. Bedrolls were spread out on every other bunk and desks in an adjoining classroom were only partly used.

A 18-year-old from Sonoma serving about a year-long sentence said the lack of crowding helps him get rehabilitated before being released. He hopes someday to enroll in Santa Rosa Junior College.

“You’re never like, ‘Aw, I can’t sit down because all the seats are filled up,’” said the young man, who was not allowed by officials to give his name.

While explanations for the drop in inmates vary, some insight is expected in a $142,000 county study to be released in January that looks at the juvenile justice system and alternatives to incarceration.

People working in the system — from probation officers to judges — have some of their own theories.

A steady decline in crime could be a contributor. The U.S. Justice Department reported violent crime in general reached its lowest level ever in 2005. State officials point to decreasing juvenile arrests since the late 1980s. And in Santa Rosa, overall crime reached a 20-year low in 2008, police said, while violent crime dropped 27 percent since 2003.

Beyond that, changes in the juvenile court’s makeup and philosophy, a different approach to committing minors to incarceration, diversion programs and economic conditions may have some bearing.

In July 2007, the county added a second juvenile court judge, speeding processing and moving children through the system quicker.

Judge Allan Hardcastle joined presiding juvenile Judge Raima Ballinger at a time of expanding caseloads and delays since have been reduced to “days and weeks rather than months,” he said.

Ballinger said the two-judge arrangement gives her more of a chance to help the children and youths and their parents and find alternatives to detention that encourage rehabilitation. Neither she nor Hardcastle have a reputation for being particularly lenient, she said.

“I just think one-on-one contact is really important,” Ballinger said, looking out the window of her second-story office at the sprawling juvenile facility. “It’s a huge factor.”

Other explanations for the decline include the introduction about a year ago of so-called “evidence based” screening to determine whether a child can be rehabilitated without juvenile hall and the startup, mental health court.

Also, longtime community programs, such as Restorative Justice, which require offenders to repair damage they caused and issue personal apologies, are chipping away at the population, officials said.

Assistant District Attorney Diana Gomez said the number of programs for at-risk youths has risen dramatically in three years, fueled in part by state and federal grants to help deter juvenile crime.

“You can’t arrest your way out of it,” Gomez said. “It takes a community to turn things around.”

As she walked the quiet corridors of the state-of-the-art facility under constant surveillance from 126 video cameras, juvenile hall director Kim King explained that the usual fall rush of new child inmates didn’t come this year, allowing her to keep a unit closed and spread the population of girls and boys more evenly.

Although the numbers crept up slightly in early November, the hall is on pace to have about 1,425 total admissions this year, down 12 percent from fiscal 2007-2008, she said.

Children still are committing the same kinds of crimes, but there are just fewer of them, King said.

“The numbers tend to go down in the summer and climb back up around September,” King said. “It didn’t happen this year. But now in November, we’re starting to see the population go up into the 80s.”

David Bennett, a Utah-based consultant who will present a report on the juvenile justice system to the county Board of Supervisors in January, said the pattern of statistical peaks and valleys will continue, but capacity at the hall will not be threatened any time soon.

The addition of a second judge and novel assessment tools could keep numbers low well into the future, he said.

“Expansion of juvenile hall is not on a front burner,” Bennett said. “It’s a good facility that will last.”

You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com.