When a federal court appointed a recipient to take over the Mississippi Jail, which suffered from the death of an inmate three years ago, Hinds County supervisors accused the move of being “completely inexplainable” to voters.
When the judge chose Rikers Island manager this summer after decades of obstacles, New York City Mayor Eric Adams rejected the decision as excessive oversight.
However, there was not much dissent after Atty. Two weeks ago, General Rob Bonta’s announcement planned to ask the judge to appoint a recipient to run his wife, Boy Hall, in LA County.
“I’m helping with that — I need a lot of help,” said director Janice Hahn, which includes Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall of Downey, the location of the riot.
Given the history of the crisis at the Juvenile Hall, the county cannot be a large part of the opposition, she noted.
“We don’t have standing legs,” she said.
For years, county boys halls have been reaching one scandal from one scandal to the next. A fatal overdose in teens, a “fight club” enveloping security guards, and a crisis of staffing without measures. In 2021, the county entered a settlement between Bonta’s office and the court and pledged to improve the situation within the hall. Currently, there are around 430 jailed young people between the ages of 13 and 24.
Last month, Bonta said he had no choice but to ask the court to approve recipients of the remaining two holes in the county, after sticking to the county’s “repeated, constantly chronic” settlement. The staff will effectively set a supervisor as the facility’s top decision maker, set budgets and hire staff. He emphasized that the county still has all the bills.
That’s an embarrassing responsibilities for county politicians. LA County became the second county in the United States and lost control over the recipients of the juvenile facility. But most of the boards seem uninterested in fighting it – on one condition.
They want the recipient to say that after union contracts and civil servant protections they place problem employees on their pay.
“It’s nearly impossible for them to be disciplined — not to mention they’ve left their position,” said Lindsey Horvas, district manager, including Barry J. Nidolph Juvenile Hall, of Sylmer. “I don’t think the acceptance approach will be successful without changing the staff and employment contracts that govern how these halls work.”
The Boys Hall of Ross Padrino in Downey has been a place of riots, escape attempts and multiple overdose since it reopened in 2023.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
On July 29, the three unions representing probation employees sent a letter to Horvath accusing them of “reckless and union-destroying rhetoric” and accusing them of ignoring state laws protecting members’ rights to collective bargaining.
“Let us be clear. Our union contracts and protections for civil servants do not protect fraud. They support a legitimate process and ensure fair and legal treatment of civil servants,” the three union presidents wrote in the letter. “If the court appoints a recipient, we will be liable to him for state law and our terms and conditions.”
Without some drastic new strengths, probation chief Guiller Moviera Rosa warns, receivers will encounter the same obstacles as all other chiefs.
“To say X, Y, Z is do X, Y, Z, unless there are explicit forces I don’t have, or if the county couldn’t implement it for civil servants or unions,” Viera Rosa said. “If it’s just an additional surveillance and you just have another person with a different budget, but you don’t have new ideas or power, that’s a serious mistake.”
And potentially expensive. County CEO Fesia Davenport warned his boss at a meeting last week. He warned that handing over financial management to recipients could have a “significant effect” on the county’s finances.
Director Kathryn Berger said she believes it is still worth the shot.
“For decades, the department has hamed out by resisting staffing issues and organizational culture that resist reform and accountability,” she said in a statement. “If receivers can get through the red tape that has halted past reform efforts, that’s a step worth taking.”
Shortly after taking up a job in 2023, Viera Rosa diagnosed the disease department as a “call-out culture.” Employees scheduled for work often did not show up due to shifts.
This issue stems from Hall’s violence, which means that many people don’t want to enter. There is a fight among the young people, and not only is the staff going to be disbanded, but there is an attack directed at the staff. Thanks to generous county leave policy, staff have a great reserve for sick days.
However, fewer staff will make conditions within the hall more unstable. Incoming officers should be staying for double shifts to address last minute staffing issues and ruin plans for the day. Staff shortages are not escorting young people in daily activities such as schools, exercise, medical appointments.
The issue of staffing in the probation department dates back more than a decade, former LA County probation chief Jerry Powers said he would send sheriff’s deputies to staff homes to urge them to return to work.
“They tried everything else. They literally did everything they could do from a departmental perspective,” said Powers, who oversaw the agency from 2011 to 2015.
That’s what happened in Cook County, the only juvenile detention facility in America. Earl Dunlap, who served as the recipient, said the facility is suffering from some of the same issues as LA County. Especially staff who don’t go to work. The federal judge gave him the ability to remove a third of his staff.
“The place was hell,” Dunlap said. “It was a whole new culture that you finished.”
Viera Rosa said she saw no indication that the Attorney General’s office wanted to grow that big.
“I think it’s too early because there are no indications about how they will make acceptance,” he said.
Deputy Probation Officer Lorenzo Arnold will be attending a 2022 rally held by the Probation Union Union Union. The probation association has repeatedly requested that the county do more to protect officers within the juvenile hall.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
Bonta’s office said in a statement that the recipient has the authority to hire and fire staff and have “all other decisions necessary for compliance.”
“If the recipient is approved, the recipient will have the power to negotiate or renegotiate the contract and petition the court to petition its contractual obligations in certain circumstances,” his office said in a statement.
Michael Dempsey, who asked Bonta to be appointed as a recipient, said he could not comment, citing the confidentiality agreement. Dempsey, the head of the Juvenile Justice Administrators Council, monitored the Hall during the settlement.
Legal experts say the question of whether recipients appointed by a Superior Court judge can assume a collective bargaining agreement is vague. Jonathan Byrd, vice president of the Deputy Probation Officers’ Union, said the state should expect an opposition barrier if they try to make changes to their contracts.
“We’ll fight that,” he says, adding that he believes the contract will be protected by decades of court precedent.
However, he said he saw no indication that the Attorney General’s office would use receivers to remove union protections. Rather, the union hopes that Bonta will take the sledgehammer to the grip the supervisor has to the agency.
“We were cautiously optimistic because we didn’t get the support we needed,” Byrd said.
Since 1979, she has only taken over prisons, prisons and juvenile halls 14 times, according to Hernandez D. Stroud, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law. He said only four people are active, including two from California who oversee psychiatry and medical care within the state’s prison system. California medical litigation has been extended for 20 years, but the award usually lasts for several years.
Experts say that unsubscribing union contracts is a rare and politically challenging authority for state judges to grant recipients.
“Even the federal recipients have left a kind of contract,” said Don Spector, a Supreme Court case focusing on the inadequate medical care of California prisoners, which focuses on recipients, Don Spector, senior prosecutor at the Prison Law Office. “It would usually be a last resort.”
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