Three years ago, the Board of Supervisors made the landmark decision to shut down its juvenile hall by the end of 2021, becoming the first major city in the nation to do so. Yet the Youth Guidance Center, as it’s officially known, remains open.
The move came in the wake a Chronicle report that showed a dramatic drop in serious youth crime that had left the state’s juvenile halls almost vacant. In its place, supevisors pledged to stop incarcerating kids and instead create home-like rehabilitative centers, including a secure site for those who pose a public safety risk. But so far, no site has been identified and no firm timeline for closure exists.
Supervisors will discuss the stalled plan at a committee hearing Thursday.
An average of just 14 juveniles per day were kept in custody in San Francisco in 2021 — at an annual cost of about $1.1 million each— inside a facility built to hold as many as 150 people.
Supervisors were supposed to approve final plans six months prior to the closure but that didn’t happen. The juvenile hall closure task force submitted a report to the board outlining recommendations on processing juvenile offenders, including possible locations for a secure yet “non-institutional” facility.
Yet juvenile hall is still housing a veritable handful of youth inmates with no firm plan for closure.
Supervisor Shamann Walton, who authored the closure legislation with Supervisor Hillary Ronen, said he wouldn’t set a “make believe timeline” for closing juvenile hall but insisted that plans are moving forward.
“We are still committed to closing juvenile hall,” he said. “But there are some real obstacles.”
The hearing and extended delay come at a time when San Francisco’s commitment to criminal justice reform is being tested. Concern about crime in San Francisco is running high, despite data that shows a complex picture , and a variety of polls show that most San Franciscans support the effort to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who they believe has been too lenient.
The 2019 decision to close juvenile hall — with a 10-1 vote — came on the heels of a national conversation about the school-to-prison pipeline and how to bring down incarceration in California. Supervisors talked about the trauma inflicted on young offenders who spend a typical day sleeping in locked cells, their bed a thin upholstered mat atop a concrete platform. City officials deemed this type of detention for children morally unacceptable and ineffective at rehabilitating young people. They also decried the exorbitant cost.
Nikita Saini, Ronen’s aide, said the slowdown in the closure plans shouldn’t be seen as a lack of commitment.
“We’re just really trying to weigh everything,” she said, “but as far as shutting down juvenile hall, we want to make that a reality.”
The biggest holdup, she said, is finding a secure, locked facility for juvenile offenders that satisfies both reform advocates and state corrections department requirements.
“We want something that is non-institutional rather than a place of isolation,” she said. “But it’s hard to find that and meet requirements. You can’t just find a house in San Francisco.”
For instance, she said, the state requires 8-foot wide hallways — much wider than the average width of a home hall.
Plans to shutter juvenile hall, which require court approval, have been slowed by COVID as well.
Walton said the next steps, which the committee is likely to recommend Thursday, include directing the city’s real estate department to identify acceptable locations for secure housing and directing the creation of support programs for children and families identified in the task force report.
That would include the creation of a wellness advocate and the city’s Department of Children, Youth and Their Families work with the Juvenile Probation Department to change the way juvenile hall is operated.
“At the end of the day, there are some issues we are not fully in control of,” Walton said, citing the need for court approval. “But we are not backsliding.”
Michael Cabanatuan (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @ctuan