The Los Angeles County Probation Division has spent solely $9.7 million of $88 million in grant cash it has obtained since 2021 to rehabilitate younger individuals who dedicated critical crimes, a state audit has discovered.
The primary motive behind the sluggish spending: the county has not but created most of the packages the state grants had been meant for, together with job coaching, gang intervention and rehabilitative companies for intercourse offenders, the report launched Tuesday by the California State Auditor stated.
L.A. county probation officers stated the auditors didn’t have a full accounting of the cash spent this final fiscal yr, which they count on would quantity to a “considerably greater” sum. And lots of new packages are about to pop up, they stated.
“We anticipate a nimble future for service ramp-up,” the probation division said in its formal response to the audit.
In 2021, as California moved to shut down its notoriously violent youth jail system, the state started to funnel thousands and thousands of {dollars} to counties to pay for companies for the younger individuals who could be transferring into their amenities.
The $88-million determine within the state audit dates from when the county began receiving the cash in 2021 by means of June of this yr.
Lots of the younger individuals who commit critical crimes akin to homicide in L.A. County are actually confined inside a safe part of Sylmar’s Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Corridor, which homes about 65 such youths. A further 21 younger individuals are at Campus Kilpatrick in Malibu.
Nidorf, specifically, has had a troubled few years, together with a deadly overdose and assaults whereas repeatedly being dinged by regulators for providing few actions for the youths incarcerated there.
Scott Budnick, a member of a state board that oversees correctional amenities, stated he has observed programming begin to beef up lately at Nidorf, although he says teenagers nonetheless spend an “outrageous period of time simply sitting in items taking part in video video games, watching TV.”
“There was an enormous lack of programming for the primary two to 3 years. Now they’re beginning to deliver issues on-line,” stated Budnick, who mentors younger folks at Kilpatrick and Nidorf. “I don’t know why it’s taken three years.”
Tuesday’s report particulars a couple of causes. With some cities reluctant to have youths transferred from state prisons to amenities inside their borders, L.A. County struggled to determine the place to place the youths. It took extra time — greater than two years — to resolve what packages to spend the cash on.
Eduardo Mundo, head of the Probation Oversight Fee, stated the delay is hardly shocking, given the complexities of allotting authorities contracts and the truth that the county was ranging from scratch with the inflow of youths from the state system.
“If you happen to didn’t count on this to occur, you weren’t actually considering,” he stated.
Even spending cash on current packages has typically proved troublesome for the county. A preferred program that sends previously incarcerated mentors into juvenile amenities was given $10 million final fiscal yr by a county committee fashioned to allocate the state cash.
Within the first three-quarters of that fiscal yr, the division had spent lower than half 1,000,000 on the mentoring program, the state audit discovered.
One shiny spot for the county: the cash’s not “use it or lose it.” The state has set no expiration date, so the county can let funds pile up — although some say that may be ill-advised.
“Going ahead, it’s inexcusable that the cash doesn’t begin getting spent faster,” Mundo stated.
