The Marin County Civil Grand Jury is renewing its call for an overhaul of the youth jail program, saying its costs are “indefensibly high.”
The investigative panel revisited the jail issue in its latest study, “The Future of Juvenile Detention in Marin: A Follow-up Report.” The title refers to a similar report the jury released in June 2015.
Then and now, the jury concluded that Marin County Juvenile Hall in San Rafael does not house enough defendants to justify the expense of running it.
The jail, with a staff of 21 full-time employees and other part-timers, costs about $4 million a year to operate. The Marin County Probation Department oversees the center.
Since 2011, the average daily cost per inmate has ranged from $562 to $993, the grand jury said. Last year, the 40-bed jail had an average daily population of 12.3, and the average daily cost per inmate was $759, the report says.
The report noted that the “problem is actually a success story,” because the criminal justice system has been tilting more toward rehabilitation than incarceration. The jurors said most youths only spend a day or two at the jail.
“Many diversion and law enforcement programs have produced the desired outcome,” the jury said.
As in the 2015 report, the latest report recommends that the county close the juvenile jail and contract with another county for youth detention. Such a move would lop off more than half the daily cost per inmate, according to the jury.
The county rejected the recommendation in 2015, partly because of the extra logistical difficulty and cost of transporting youths outside the area.
The county also said that Sonoma and Napa counties were not interested in such an arrangement. But the grand jury says the county only made informal inquiries and that it should issue an actual request for proposals to all nearby counties.
Failing that, the jury said, the county could make fuller use of the juvenile jail by accepting youths from other counties for a fee. The funds could be used to upgrade the aging center, which was built in the 1960s.
In preparing the report, the grand jury said it took a tour of the jail and interviewed probation officers and a county supervisor. Michael Daly, the county’s chief probation officer, said the grand jury report would have been “more enlightening” if the jurors had talked to other stakeholders like police chiefs, public defenders, school officials, parents and Judge Beverly Wood, who oversees Marin’s juvenile court.
Daly he is against the grand jury’s recommendation to contract detention services from other counties.
“If the juvenile hall closes for any period of time and then we attempted to re-open it because an outside contract was terminated, that would not work so well,” Daly said. “The juvenile hall would then be mandated to meet current codes and we would more than likely fail to meet that requirement due to the facility being over 55 years old.”
Supervisor Damon Connolly, whose District 1 includes the jail, said the county wants to keep youth detainees in the community for contact with their families.
“With that said, we plan to study whether the juvenile hall could be replaced with a new facility with a smaller capacity and less required staffing,” said Connolly, who holds the Board of Supervisors presidency this year.
June 24, 2018
Marin Independent Journal
By Gary Klien
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