Frankie Guzman

With coronavirus pummeling Californians’ health and economy like a modern day plague, few expected a line item buried in an otherwise deficit-driven budget that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced Thursday: After decades of the state running what was once the country’s most vast and notorious youth prison system, the end could be near for the Division of Juvenile Justice.

Late Tuesday afternoon, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) suspended new entries into the state’s juvenile and adult prison systems, part of an effort to protect incarcerated individuals and staff from the spread of the coronavirus.

Amid a shrinking juvenile justice system, a new California bill is part of a statewide debate about how the state should serve young people at greatest risk of involvement with the criminal justice system.

The philanthropic arm of Google and the San Francisco 49ers football club are giving $2.35 million to the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) to support the California Youth Justice Initiative, a comprehensive juvenile justice reform effort in Santa Clara County, California.

Advocates in California are lobbying Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to set aside $100 million for an effort to steer young people away from involvement in the juvenile justice system across the state.

After a plan to create a new young adult prison system in California failed last year, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is moving forward with two proposals to serve more juveniles and some young adults in the state’s juvenile prisons.

When Juan Gomez first arrived at a notorious California youth prison in rural Amador County at the age of 16, he remembers an acute sense of powerlessness. Guards at the Preston Youth Correctional Facility patrolled the grounds with impunity, meting out beatings and macings to the youth locked up there.

On Feb. 12, California Attorney General Kamala Harris held a press conference in Los Angeles to announce the creation of a “Bureau of Children’s Justice” with goals ranging from reducing truancy and combatting “childhood trauma” to improving the foster care and juvenile justice systems.