Editorial: L.A. County’s juvenile hall catastrophe is a quarter-century in the making

Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall is named for the last Los Angeles County chief probation officer to keep the position for more than four years. On Wednesday, the California Department of Justice asked a court to enforce a 2021 settlement requiring L.A. County to fix “illegal and unsafe conditions” at Nidorf and Central Juvenile Hall near downtown Los Angeles, noting that conditions had deteriorated since the agreement was signed. L.A. County progressively lost control of its juvenile probation operations over the last quarter-century because of a toxic combination of inconsistent leadership, poor labor agreements, competing juvenile justice ideologies and, paradoxically, both inattention and micromanagement from the Board of Supervisors. Los Angeles County Chief Probation Officer Jerry Powers was hired three years ago to steady a department racked by employee misbehavior, favoritism and mismanagement, so it’s more than a little ironic and disheartening that Powers, who stepped down Tuesday, was himself under investigation for promoting a woman with whom he is said to have had a personal relationship.