The new approach centers on providing community-based support while taking a hard look at whether girls actually pose a public safety threat. Many are now diverted before they ever reach juvenile h…
Former Santa Clara County juvenile court Judge Katherine Lucero is now spearheading statewide efforts to stop the incarceration of girls. After spending her teenage years in and out of juvenile detention, Arabella Guevara was used to crowded conditions such as mattresses on the floor and girls triple-bunked in cells meant for two.
What Guevara didn’t know was that the quiet around her reflected a flurry of activity on the outside involving the local courts, probation department, prosecutors, mental health providers and community groups. Santa Clara County’s Juvenile Justice Gender Responsive Task Force had been meeting regularly in service of an ambitious goal: ending the incarceration of girls.
The effort to divert girls from incarceration is mirrored in several other states, including Hawaii, which recently reported it did not have a single girl in its long-term commitment facility.Santa Clara County launched its effort in 2015, focusing initially on improving conditions for girls and gender-expansive youth in juvenile detention facilities.
Researchers from Vera and New York University reviewed the files of more than 70 girls involved with the delinquency court and found that 80% had prior involvement with the child welfare system. On average, each girl had been the subject of 10 reports of child abuse or neglect. Eighty percent had experienced homelessness or housing instability.
“Those services should be provided out in the community,” Birchard said. “We shouldn’t involve a young person in the justice system at all, if possible.”Former juvenile court Judge Katherine Lucero, who was instrumental in launching Santa Clara County’s gender task force, has since been named head of California’s Office of Youth and Community Restoration.
“They can cite and release; they can contact a parent,” Birchard said, “but they can’t bring them into custody for something low-level because we’re going to release them anyway.”In the spring of 2020, while she was still being held at the ranch, Guevara was on FaceTime with her mother when a supervisor interrupted the call.
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