Juvenile Camp Surrounded by Barbed Wire
Juvenile probation camps have recently come under a lot of scrutiny by the US Department of Justice, which on October 31, 2008 released a report on these centers based on detainee interviews, reviews of probation records and visits to camps.
According to federal investigators, “We learned that fights occur not only within the staff’s field of supervision, but many occur out of staff’s line of sight, in places that could not be well supervised given the small number of staff.”
These findings may offer some insight into how an 18 year-old African American inmate at Camp Miller in Malibu sustained serious neck injury during a racially motivated attack earlier this month, just one day after the federal report publicly criticized the unsafe conditions at these centers.
In response to the report, and quite possibly influenced by this latest incident at Camp Miller, “county supervisors approved plans to hire independent monitors to force the probation department to comply with its own standards for, among other things, staffing and violence prevention,” according to the LA Times.
In the meantime, the attack at Camp Miller is still under investigation, although for the time being staff misconduct is not suspected. However, youth advocates are speaking out against the attack, claiming that it proves there are far graver problems within the juvenile probation system that are being overlooked.
“We’ve continuously advised probation officials that they need to involve community leaders, gang interventionists, to help squash the violence,” said Kim McGill of the Youth Justice Coalition.
The corrections system has its flaws, but serves its purpose. However, when it comes to minors, one has to ask whether violence and staff misconduct aren’t fostering criminal attitudes, rather than providing these youths with alternatives to keep them on the straight and narrow.
Dana Picore, Ph.D.