Los Angeles County is on the final step of a court-approved plan designed to save Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall from closure, but critics argue the effort is failing to live up to its promises and instead has created turmoil throughout the probation system.
Advocates and two unions representing probation officers say the plan has destabilized the county’s other juvenile facilities and left a skeleton crew to monitor tens of thousands of probationers on community supervision.
When the plan was pitched a year ago, a high-ranking official in the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office warned it could undermine the rest of the system. And he now believes those fears have become reality.
“From our position, things are much worse now,” Luis Rodriguez, the public defender’s juvenile division chief, said during a recent court hearing. “They are not getting better.”
The Probation Department received approval for its “Depopulation Plan” in May 2025 and estimated it could reduce the overall population at Los Padrinos by about 100 detainees — a reduction necessary to manage the facility with a dwindled workforce — within three months.
Today, nearly a year later, Los Padrinos’ population sits at 224, roughly 60 less than when the plan was approved. That decrease largely came from phases that transferred youths from Los Padrinos to other locations, including all of the girls to Campus Kilpatrick in the Santa Monica Mountains and boys accused of the most serious of crimes to the reopened Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar.
Though the population at Los Padrinos has declined, the overall number of youths in custody, across all facilities, rose from 567 in May 2025 to 594 as of March 25, according to the L.A. County Probation Oversight Commission.
Many factors at play
Population levels can be influenced by many factors outside the Probation Department’s control, such as arrest rates and court decisions. The department is attempting to implement “significant changes in a challenging environment,” spokesperson Vicky Waters said in an email.
“The Los Angeles County Probation Department’s Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall depopulation plan remains in progress and continues to be implemented consistent with the Court’s direction,” Waters wrote. “The plan was designed with a dual purpose: to reduce the population at Los Padrinos to support safer and more sustainable staffing ratios, and to transition youth into settings that are better aligned with their individual needs, including gender-responsive and specialized care environments.”
Waters did not respond to a request for the average staffing ratios at each facility.
Detainees with developmental disabilities
The last phase of the depopulation plan calls for moving about 20 boys with developmental disabilities to the Dorothy Kirby Center in the City of Commerce, a facility dedicated to mental health services.
Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa told the Board of Supervisors at its April 28 meeting that it could be completed within a few weeks to two months. Viera Rosa expects the population at Los Padrinos to end up closer to 200 now.
Transferring those youths to Dorothy Kirby requires approval from a state regulatory board that has become increasingly agitated with Los Angeles County, and there’s a chance major renovations could be needed to meet the state’s standards.
L.A. County had not formally notified the state board of its plans or asked for any technical assistance as of May 1, according to a spokesperson for the Board of State and Community Corrections, the regulatory agency overseeing California’s jails and juvenile halls.
Waters said the department is “continuing to work toward the appropriate rehousing of youth with developmental and specialized needs to Dorothy Kirby Center as part of the plan’s final phase.”
The county’s handling of youths with developmental disabilities in the interim has prompted yet another fight.
Two nonprofits, Public Counsel and Disability Rights California, have accused the county of violating the terms of a 2016 settlement agreement requiring the county to follow certain directives when working with that population. So far, Judge Miguel Espinoza, who is overseeing implementation of the depopulation plan, has asked the two sides to work together on a solution, in the hopes of avoiding more litigation.
State takeover still sought
The depopulation plan formed amid a legal challenge brought by the Public Defender’s Office. In another court, the California Department of Justice is attempting to have the juvenile system placed under a receivership, in response to the county’s failure to adhere to hundreds of mandates outlined in a different settlement agreement.
The Public Defender’s Office filed its challenge after L.A. County refused to comply with the BSCC’s order to shut down Los Padrinos in December 2024.
Though the plan is now nearing completion, Los Angeles County has yet to ask BSCC to reinspect Los Padrinos to determine if the facility has addressed the deficiencies that prompted the closure order. Youths at Los Padrinos interviewed by a BSCC inspector during an unannounced visit in March noted improvements, but that visit was far less comprehensive than a full inspection.
Same problems, different sites
The problems previously seen at Los Padrinos, including staffing shortages and violence, have cropped up elsewhere since the transfers began in mid-2025.
In January, a fight broke out involving 14 girls inside a classroom at Kilpatrick and an officer was subsequently placed on administrative leave for using pepper spray to break up the brawl.
The remote facility in the Santa Monica Mountains has struggled to maintain sufficient staffing, with some employees reportedly working “back-to-back 20-hour shifts with very little rest in between,” according to a March 2026 inspection by the Board of State and Community Corrections.
The Los Angeles County Probation Oversight Commission conducted its own inspection of Kilpatrick in February. Officers claimed they limited their food and water intake out of fear they couldn’t get relieved to use the restroom if needed. Girls at the facility reported having less contact with mental health practitioners and substance abuse counselors than they had before.
In response, the Oversight Commission voted to recommend moving all girls and gender-expansive youths who came from Dorothy Kirby back until “appropriate and equal programs, services and staffing can be made readily available” at Kilpatrick. The Probation Department has dismissed the proposal, with Viera Rosa publicly describing the board’s recommendations as “not well thought out.”
More staff have been assigned to Kilpatrick in recent months, according to Viera Rosa.
Pepper spray usage and violence also surged at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in the first months following the transfers to that facility.
Kilpatrick, Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall and its counterpart, the Barry J. Nidorf Secure Youth Treatment Facility, have each failed recent inspections from the BSCC. Both Los Padrinos and Barry J. Nidorf continue to operate in violation of a state law that prohibits the use of a juvenile facility declared “unsuitable” by state regulators. Kilpatrick narrowly avoided receiving that same designation earlier this month.
Field office staffing crisis
To meet its staffing needs, Los Angeles County redeployed even more officers from its field offices to the juvenile halls in March, leaving fewer officers to supervise the tens of thousands of adult and juvenile probationers on community supervision.
Judge Espinoza detailed his own experience with the plan’s rollout during the April 24 hearing, noting the county’s redeployment of officers had harmed the services provided by the department to the courts.
“It is very disruptive,” Espinoza said.
Waters did not respond to questions asking how many officers were transferred, how those redeployments have impacted caseloads or what the average staffing ratios are at each of its juvenile facilities now. The county had fewer than 120 probation officers supervising 22,000 probationers as of August, even before the additional redeployments. In one field office at the time, a single officer had 715 clients.
Waters said the redeployments reflect “longstanding operational challenges, including staffing constraints and the need to meet court-ordered and regulatory requirements.”
“At the same time, we are reimagining community supervision to ensure individuals continue to receive appropriate oversight and support,” she said. “This includes increasing home visits, leveraging digital tools to maintain consistent contact, and deploying mobile vans to expand our presence directly in the communities we serve.”
‘System breaking down’
In statements, the unions representing deputy probation officers and supervising officers denied that the depopulation plan is making a difference. The executive board of the Los Angeles County Deputy Probation Officers’ Union said “morale is at the floor.”
The board plans to file a union-wide grievance against the county over the latest redeployments, according to its website.
The department’s vacancy rate remains at nearly 30% and the county has struggled to get new hires to stick around.
“At the frontline, this system is breaking down in real time. We don’t have enough officers to safely staff the halls, and we don’t have enough officers left in the field to supervise the community,” the statement reads. “Our members are being forced into double shifts in violent facilities, and that is creating dangerous conditions across the board.”
Officers are being pushed into “unsafe, unsustainable conditions” where officers have to call out because they aren’t getting enough rest to safely perform their duties, according to the union.
“We’ve lost over a third of our workforce and the system is paying the price,” said Reggie Torres Jr., president of the Supervising Deputy Probation Officers Association, in a statement. “Officers are exhausted, supervision is breaking down and safety is being compromised.”