Following years of failed attempts to better serve juvenile offenders and the public's safety, California's once-sprawling youth corrections system may soon bow to a final, unprecedented strategy: shutting its locked gates for good.
Budget pressure in a system with annual costs of $200,000 per ward drove Gov. Jerry Brown this week to propose halting all new intakes at the Division Of Juvenile Justice. If approved by state legislators, beginning next year the state's three remaining prisons would then shrink themselves to oblivion, as current inmates complete their terms. Under the plan, county probation departments would assume the custody and treatment of all juvenile offenders -- an expansion from current practice where only the most serious and violent are housed by the state...
LINK - MercuryNews.com