4 New Escapees from Camp Glenwood

Letter

By on Mon, July 13, 2009

It is time to close Camp Glenwood this month and return all of the inmates to the Youth Service Center for rehabilitation!
Nothing has changed - 4 escapees this time demonstrates a lack of staff supervision.  Build a double fence, add video and roving supervision.  Until that is done, no more commitments to the facility.
The new Chief Probation Officer, Stu Forrest, has no chance of getting a handle on this problem until major reforms, policies and rebuilding of this facility is completed.  We are using outdated facilities to use undated programming, but they have to complement one another and they just don’t. A walk-away facility no longer serves the public as they did in the 1960s.  The tone and attitudes are hardened by many of the juveniles today and going to CYA or today’s California Department Of Corrections and Rehabilitation - Juvenile Justice Division is not an option to deter escapes!
It is time for a comprehensive Compliance Review of our court and probation system.  That audit should establish a baseline of performance and deficiencies should be corrected in 120 days and in a year, another audit should be performed to measure result to start a longitudinal study so we can have a history of what is really going on.
If the BOS, the Juvenile Court and the probation department can’t do this, then it is time to go back to the Grand Jury whose last finding on Camp Glenwood was flawed!
It is also time to clean up the old Hillcrest Facility next to the YSC - get probation community service work crews out to clean up and set things in order.  Well over a year ago, this facility, I am told was in the process of being deconstructed.  It is time it was done or turn the facility into a working rehabilitation model for some program.