Walnut Creek Supervisors Miffed By Juvenile Hall News Release

WALNUT CREEK, CA — The two supervisors whose districts include portions of the city of Walnut Creek — Candace Andersen and Karen Mitchoff — were taken aback Tuesday when Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton sent out a news release proposing that the county's Juvenile Hall close in 2021.

Becton announced the formation of a "Reimagine Youth Justice Task Force" of county and community representatives promoting more restorative youth justice programs.

During county departmental budget hearings Tuesday, Anderson, Mitchoff and Supervisor Diane Burgis — whose area includes Brentwood, Oakley, Antioch and rural eastern CoCo — said they were disappointed and surprised to have first heard of Becton's planned task force Tuesday morning.

Andersen and Mitchoff said Becton's announcement is a "slap in the face" to Chief Probation Officer Esa Ehmen-Krause, under whose purview fall both Juvenile Hall and the Orin Allen Youth Rehabilitation Facility, also called the Byron Boys Ranch.

Andersen said she was troubled that Becton announced the task force plan with little discussion with or input from the full Board of Supervisors. Mitchoff said she didn't appreciate learning of the task force from the news release.

Added Burgis, "I do feel we've put our chief probation officer in an awkward situation."

In her department's budget presentation a few hours later on Tuesday, Ehmen-Krause said that given declining populations at both the Juvenile Hall in Martinez and the Orin Allen facility near Discovery Bay, and considering the maintenance needs at the Orin Allen facility, her office proposes closing the Orin Allen facility in 2022. Residents there would be moved to Juvenile Hall, Ehmen-Krause said, and new community-based programs could be based there, too.

Those ideas run counter to those presented in Becton's news release Tuesday morning, which supports keeping the Orin Allen facility open, and not Juvenile Hall.

Ehmen-Krause told the supervisors she was "taken aback a little bit" by Becton's announcement, a draft of which she saw late Monday. Ehmen-Krause said Tuesday afternoon she shared her concerns with Becton earlier in the day.

A district attorney's spokesman said Tuesday afternoon that Becton had no comment Tuesday on the situation beyond the morning press release.

The Probation Department, like the District Attorney's Office and every other county department, faces budget cuts caused largely by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has meant increased spending for many departments and less revenue for most. The 2020-21 budget, yet to be finalized, is about $24 million less than its earliest draft had called for.

Two supervisors, John Gioia and Federal Glover, support the DA's plan and are quoted in Becton's news release. Gioia said, "We need to move away from institutionalization of young people and instead invest in community-based restorative justice solutions which make us safer and are more fiscally responsible." Added Glover, "In many cases, a service-oriented approach will achieve much more in rehabilitating and helping (young people) to become productive members of our community."

— Patch editor Bea Karnes and Bay City News contributed to this story