Committee forwards ordinance to close juvenile hall and reinvest funds in community alternatives

The Government Audit & Oversight Committee on May 16 recommended that the full Board of Supervisors consider an ordinance that would require the city to close the Juvenile Justice Center (Juvenile Hall) at 375 Woodside by Dec. 31, 2021, expand community-based alternatives and create a working group and a youth-justice reinvestment fund.

Sponsor Supervisor Shimon Walton, who introduced the measure, said the goal is to replace institutional detention with "a rehabilitative, non-institutional place of detention" for the small minority of youth that state law requires to remain confined and to redirect funds into community programs, job training and mental-health services. "We would never put a system in place that is worse than our current juvenile hall," Walton said, describing the proposal as an effort to invest in individualized plans, education and mentorship rather than prolonged confinement.

Supporters included youth who testified at the hearing, as well as a broad coalition of community-based organizations — Young Women’s Freedom Center, Coleman Advocates, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ), Larkin Street Youth Services and others — who argued that incarceration is costly, disproportionately affects Black, Latino and Pacific Islander youth, and is counterproductive. Advocates cited municipal and academic data presented at the hearing: in December 2018 Juvenile Hall averaged only about 27 percent of its 150-bed capacity and testimony referenced annual facility costs in the millions and per-youth annual estimates cited in testimony ranging into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Opponents included probation counselors, union representatives and some community members who urged caution, called for a concrete alternative plan before any closure and warned about potential job losses and out-of-county placements that could harm family visitation. Juvenile Probation Department (JPD) staff and field counselors described training and programs inside the facility — educational services (Woodside Learning Center), vocational training, and mental-health interventions — and asked for staff involvement in redesign efforts.

Amendments accepted by the committee clarified the working group's duties and processes. The amendments require the working group to form a needs-assessment subcommittee (with specified membership), to conduct confidential review of juvenile files to the extent authorized by court order, to request aggregate de-identified data from city agencies and the San Francisco Unified School District, to identify housing options for detained male youth following the closure of the boys shelter, to consult the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families, and to produce a final report by June 2021 that lays out the steps necessary to close Juvenile Hall by Dec. 31, 2021.

Outcome: Supervisor Walton moved to forward the ordinance with the amendments to the full Board of Supervisors with a positive recommendation; the committee moved the item without objection. The committee instructed staff to carry the amendments forward and requested that the working group actively include labor, JPD and community-based providers in planning the transition.

Next steps: The ordinance and the committee’s recommendation will be transmitted to the full Board for consideration; supervisors asked for ongoing reports and emphasized that affected staff and labor should be part of the implementation process.