Editorial: L.A. County’s mishandling of Care First model is a cautionary tale for Gov. Newsom
LA TimesLiving quarters at rebuilt Campus Kilpatrick in Malibu, pictured in 2017 shortly before the rebuilt juvenile probation camp’s opening. Care First, as the term is used in Los Angeles County government, refers to a reorientation of the county’s vast array of programs away from jail. Most people who leave L.A. County’s jails, juvenile halls and probation camps will be back — or else headed to state prison or into homelessness. Failure and neglect of the sort that currently afflicts the county’s juvenile justice system, where probation officers don’t bother coming to work and juveniles sit for days with nothing to do but play video games, is a huge gift to opponents of the Care First concept. More than a decade ago, Los Angeles County won state funding to tear down a decrepit juvenile probation camp called Camp Vernon Kilpatrick and build in its place a costly new facility designed around a non-punitive therapeutic and rehabilitative juvenile justice model developed in Missouri.
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