Santa Clara County has maintained near-zero rates of incarceration for girls and young women for several years. Soon, four new counties will follow suit. Photo: Santa Clara Probation Department
By Betty Marquez Rosales, EdSource, March 3, 2023
Four California counties will soon be offering girls and young women in youth jails more community-based alternatives to being detained.
The initiative follows a pilot in Santa Clara County, established in 2018, which found that most incarcerated youth in girls’ units were in jails for lack of somewhere safe to go. Even when probation officials recommended their release, the girls stayed in county jails because of a lack of appropriate alternatives, such as safe temporary housing in a foster home or financial support to avoid returning to an abusive relationship.
“Ultimately, there was no place to have them be other than juvenile hall,” said Katherine Lucero, referring to her time as a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge prior to joining the new state agency overseeing the state’s juvenile justice system. “That was hard for me to digest because I always thought we were only putting youth in detention facilities for public safety reasons.”
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