(published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 8,2001)

Kids in the Hall

A proposal to change how arrested kids are processed through the juvenile justice system is exposing how the city neglects troubled youth.

By Tali Woodward

In 1997 San Francisco officials approved a landmark plan to overhaul the city's juvenile justice system and directed $5 million a year to the effort.  Four years later the number of kids locked up at San Francisco's juvenile hall---named, euphemistically, the Youth Guidance Center---remains the same despite the reform efforts.  And this is a time when youth crime---both violent and non-violent---is down.  According to a recent report, the chances that an arrested youth will be detained have actually doubled over the past decade.

While juvenile justice advocates agree that things haven't improved, there's little consensus about how the city should proceed.  And the Community Assessment and Referral Center, the linchpin of the 1997 reform plan, is at the center of the debate.  CARC was set up so that the city police officers don't have to take every kid they arrest to the infamously overcrowded YGC.  Instead, minor offenders can go to the nonprofit CARC, where the focus in intervention.  There kids receive individualized assessments and are referred to a variety of community-based programs, including those that provide housing, counseling or tutoring. (Several of CARC's case managers told the Bay Guardian that the number-one request from kids who come in is a job.)

A new proposal to expand CARC is exposing political rifts within the juvenile justice community.  Sup. Matt Gonzalez wants to make CARC the juvenile Probation Department's only intake center--so that it would be the first stop for every kid who's arrested.  But critics say putting what's now an alternative program under the department's control will dilute the program's effectiveness. 

The Proposal is also prompting renewed public debate about what city officials must do to reduce the juvenile hall population---namely, limiting in school arrests and expanding social service programs....

...CARC, which opened in May1998 as a three-year pilot program, got off to a rocky start.  Blistering reports from the city's civil grand jury and a group of UC Berkeley researchers said that CARC was poorly managed and reaching only a small portion of kids arrested in the city.  Huckleberry Youth Programs then took over the program, and by all accounts it is running it successfully.

Today, CARC sees one-quarter of the kids arrested in San Francisco, according to the director Garry Bieringer.   Each one is screened for physical and mental health problems before a probation officer explains the legal process ahead.  A caseworker then takes over for a lengthy confidential  session in order to determine which community programs might be of help.  The hope is that this multi-layered approach will prevent future arrests. 

Impressed by CARC's success, advocates such a Lee began calling for CARC's expansion.  Gonzalez agreed to push for the change; he's introduced a resolution, to be considered by the Board of Supervisors in late September, that would make CARC a permanent program under Juvenile Probation.

As the head of the Mayor's Criminal Justice Council, Kimiko Burton oversaw the start of CARC.  She was appointed public defender by Willie Brown in January and will go up against Gonzalez all y Jeff Adachi for office next March.  "I don't believe CARC should be moved," she told us.  "It's specifically designed to be separate from Probation.  I don't understand how [moving it] is going to reduce the population in juvenile hall."

It's true, that right now CARC staffers don't decide which kids they see and which ones are sent to YGC.  Police officers are supposed to call the probation officer assigned to CARC each time they arrest a juvenile.  And while the CARC staff can recommend that the kid be brought to them, their advice is not binding.  But Gonzalez says CARC could transform the department's basic culture.  "CARC isn't just about the influence it has on Probation and how they see things," he told us.

Gonzalez aide Rob Eshelman said that Juvenile Probation has to commit to reducing the hall population for it to happen.  "This is a way of saying 'This is a legislative mandate, implement this.'"

While Bieringer and many of his staffers are adamant that reforms are needed, they have serious concerns about making CARC the city's central juvenile intake.  The agency hasn't taken an official position on the measure.

"We won't be able to maintain our culture if we're the central intake, because we'll need more police and a locked facility for serious offenders," one case manager told us.  When a kid comes in, CARC staffers often point out that there are no bars and gates at the facility--and that they are not interested in locking kids up.

One CARC case manager said, "Trying to establish a relationship with the kid is the biggest thing.  It takes some time to convince them you're not law enforcement.  If we were under Probation, it would change things."

Jesse E. Williams Jr., chief of the Juvenile Probation Department, has been critical of the proposal.   He said he would fax us his statement on Gonzalez's legislation, but we did not receive one by press time.  According to several sources, he's been lobbying community programs to oppose it, saying that making CARC a permanent part of Juvenile Probation would jeopardize city funding for other programs that serve the same population.

Gonzalez, though, is pushing ahead in the face of this opposition.

Some CARC staffers still want certain assurances. "We want to know that our management would stay intact--and that our 15-kid maximum caseload would be maintained."

"I understand that people who work at CARC don't want it to change because they don't want to mess it up, but it has to be expanded if the system is going to change, " Gonzalez said.

Bieringer told us that Gonzalez started working on his legislation without talking to anyone who works at CARC--and that the supervisor came to visit only after Bieringer called to invite him.  Although Coleman Advocates has worked closely with both CARC and Gonzalez's office, CARC staffers say they fell they were left out of the decision-making process.

That's unfortunate--because they point to specific reasons behind the high detention rate.  Several CARC employees told us that administrators at some local schools rely on CARC to deal with relatively tame disciplinary issues.  Their proof?  They say that fewer kids come in during the summer and other school vacations.  Office statistics show that a full third of the kids brought to CARC are arrested at school.  Mary Varalli, one of CARC's psychiatric counselors, told us that school referrals seem to be going up.  "It's a sick statement about our society that the single place a kid's most likely to get arrested is at school," she added. 

The statistics for citywide juvenile arrests during the last half of 2000 bear this argument out: there are significantly fewer arrests on weekends, and slightly more kids are picked up during school hours than during times when kids are not in class.

"My staff spends more time working on school issues than on anything else," Bieringer said.  He hopes that the district will begin to work on this problem, but so far he's been disappointed.

Bieringer, Lee and representatives from Legal Services for Children and La Raza Centro Legal recently wrote a letter to Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, "As members of community-based organizations that work with arrested youth every day, we are aware that some schools are calling the police in inappropriate situations," it states.  The advocates asked the district to work on the problem--and start to compiling thorough statistics on in-school arrests.

Finding residential programs for kids continues to be a huge problem for the juvenile justice system.  All too often kids who come in CARC don't have a home to go back to, and if staff can't find an appropriate alternative for them, they're shipped over to YGC.  For instance, there are only two temporary shelter beds available for girls who get arrested when they are already on probation .  One caseworker told us that because those beds are in a predominantly male facility, many girls actually ask to be sent to YGC instead.

It's also common for kids to be stuck in YGC because of placement problems; at least 30 percent of the hall population is eligible for release at any given time, according to Burton.

Gonzalez says he doesn't doubt that those other factors are contributing to the high juvenile hall numbers, and he hopes the Board of Supervisors can address them.  That's why he's moved to establish a one-year committee made up of three criminal justice experts who would identify problems and recommend policy changes to the board. 

That resolution drew fire as it moved through the board's committee process.  Jeannie Hwang Bray, director of the Delinquency Prevention Commission, summarized criticism of the legislation when she said, "Another committee overseeing the existing commissions would be redundant.  We're already accountable to the Board of Supervisors."

But the argument that there are several active and effective bodies overseeing the city's juvenile justice system falls apart quickly.  The DPC focuses on preventing kids from getting into trouble, not watching out for those who are already tangled up with law enforcement.  When supervisor Tom Ammiano scheduled a board hearing on the system a few months ago, it was the first in years.  And while Juvenile Probation has a state-mandated advisory commission that's supposed to oversee planning, the department only convenes it when there are funding decisions to make. 

"It's very telling that no one's even mentioned that body in their criticism of this proposal,"  Lee said.  She said that no one is able to get appropriate data from Juvenile Probation on the dearth of residential beds or mental health programs--services that are needed to reduce the population in juvenile hall.  She said that that other policies --such as the one that ensures all out-of -country  offenders are sent immediately to YGC---must be examined carefully.  But Lee is pleased that there's finally some movement on the issue: "When was the last time there was a member of the Board of Supervisors who was willing to carry a major piece of reform legislation?"