A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has, once again, delayed ruling on whether to shut down Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, the county’s largest youth detention facility, as it continues to operate in violation of state law.
Judge Miguel Espinoza, who has weighed the possible closure of Los Padrinos since Dec. 23, questioned representatives and attorneys from the Probation Department, the District Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office for roughly two hours Friday, Jan. 24, before deciding to hold off on a decision until Feb. 14.
In the interim, he ordered the Probation Department to provide status updates about its efforts to fix the staffing crisis at the juvenile hall. “I’m not turning a blind eye to it,” he said.
The delay came after Probation’s Chief Deputy Kimberly Epps announced the state agency that previously found Los Padrinos out of compliance has agreed to a reinspection to determine whether staffing at the Downey-based facility has improved. If Los Padrinos manages to pass that inspection, it would potentially render any decision moot, as the facility would no longer be “unsuitable” or subject to closure under California law.
It’s unclear when the Board of State and Community Corrections, the regulatory body responsible for overseeing California’s jails and juvenile halls, will carry out the reinspection, but, according to Epps, inspectors already have requested a laundry list of documents.
During the hearing, Epps told the judge her department has reduced the population at Los Padrinos down to a low of 231 and is in the process of sorting through more than 1,000 applications from prospective new probation recruits. Another two dozen lateral transfers from other probation departments, drawn by a $24,000 signing bonus, are going through background checks, she said. It could take up to three months to bring on the already trained transfers, or up to nine months for the new recruits, Epps said.
Still, the chief deputy was confident the population reduction, along with other incentives, such as a new standby program that pays probation officers to be “on call,” will allow the department to consistently hit the necessary staff-to-youth ratios and to provide all the services required under the law, such as timely arrival to school and outdoor recreation.
“We are meeting those guidelines,” Epps said.
Espinoza’s questioning at Friday’s hearing suggests he is struggling to find the best path forward and could see the reinspection as a barometer for the Probation Department’s progress.
Los Padrinos, having failed inspection after inspection last year due to dangerously low staffing, was legally required to close in December, but the Probation Department has refused to comply, claiming there is nowhere else to send the youth, all of whom are “preadjudicated,” meaning their court cases are still pending.
Critics, including the Public Defender’s Office, argue the Probation Department had years to correct the deficiencies identified by state inspectors and should not be allowed to continue to house youth in substandard conditions solely because the county did not prepare a backup.
Los Angeles County could have built a new campus for juveniles in the years since its juvenile halls were first declared “unsuitable” or, in the short term, spread Los Padrinos’ population out across the department’s smaller facilities, argued Luis Rodriguez, juvenile division chief for the Public Defender’s Office.
Los Padrinos’ predecessors, Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall and Central Juvenile Hall, were shut down for largely the same reasons in 2023 after nearly two years of back and forth battles with the BSCC.
“What we know now is that we continue to kick the can down the road,” Rodriguez said.
Espinoza, who took up the broader question of Los Padrinos’ future as part of a juvenile murder case, expressed concerns that closing Los Padrinos — and forcing the Probation Department to come up with an alternative — could disrupt the stability at other juvenile facilities. Moving some youth from the juvenile hall to a juvenile camp, which have not been as affected by the staffing issues, for example, could cause chaos, he said.
“You’re asking the court to jump off a cliff on an experiment that would be conducted on the backs of children,” Espinoza told Rodriguez.
Allowing Los Padrinos to stay open in defiance of state law effectively carves out “an exemption” for Los Angeles County, Rodriguez argued. He urged the court to follow the law.
Under California’s Welfare and Institutions Code, a facility declared “unsuitable” by the BSCC must either fix the areas of noncompliance or close within 60 days. Los Padrinos has now been “unsuitable” since Oct. 14.
Prior inspections found that youth at the Los Padrinos arrived late to school, missed medical appointments and were confined to their rooms for excessively long periods because not enough probation officers were showing up for work. As the available staff declined, the tension and violence within the facility increased, pushing even more officers to call out over safety concerns.
“We just want to make sure these children, along with the probation officers, are safe,” Rodriguez said.