Supervisors press probation for more granular juvenile use‑of‑force data; researchers warn about re‑identification risk

The county probation department presented its annual use‑of‑force report for juvenile settings and answered supervisors’ questions about racial breakdowns and trends.

A supervisor asked staff to break the data down by month and facility to assess whether the number of incidents was disproportionally affecting Black youth. Research analyst Kristen Keller said that while the request is reasonable, small monthly counts could risk re‑identifying youth in custody; she suggested alternative ways to present comparable data or provide it in a confidential memo to the board. “Because the numbers in the facility are already so small…there is concern that those particular youth could be reidentifiable,” she told the committee.

Supervisors discussed April’s spike in incidents and whether it resulted from a small number of youths with repeated incidents. Probation staff noted that a few individuals drove some of the increase and described multidisciplinary case conferencing, partnerships with behavioral health, and pilots to secure housing placements at release to reduce time on the so‑called Jack list. The board moved and voted to receive the report and asked probation to explore ways to provide more disaggregated information while protecting confidentiality.

The exchange highlighted the tradeoff supervisors face between transparency for assessing racial disproportionality and protecting individual privacy when populations are small.