Though it’s not on the parchment, Moreno, 21, earned his Johanna Boss High School diploma over the past two years at a state prison for juveniles in Stockton. And as one of fewer than 800 remaining youths in the custody of the soon-to-be-shuttered juvenile division of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, he said, that accomplishment—behind razor wire—was more than just a step toward a future job or a rite of passage.
“Being the first one [in the family] to graduate,” he said, “is like creating a sense of normalcy.”
That “normalcy” is what Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers have in mind as they vote this week and in coming days on a plan to begin transitioning what’s left of the state-run youth detention system from the purview of adult corrections back to a more rehabilitative model.
Part of a larger shift away from California’s tough-on-crime era, in which juvenile justice policy was driven by fear of young “superpredators” and street gangs, the change—written into the state budget passed Thursday and coming “trailer bills” clarifying budget language—has been described by Newsom as a first step to “end juvenile imprisonment in California as we know it.”
California is one of only 13 states where juvenile justice is still housed within a corrections or public safety agency, according to state corrections officials. And over the past decade and a half, California, too, has moved away from the prison model, shifting more and more young people in the system into county-run programs.
Under the plan, juvenile justice will be reorganized as a new department called the Department of Youth and Community Restoration by July 2020. A separate bill, SB-284, further incentivizes the shift, roughly quintupling the cost to counties of sending juveniles to the state system.
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