Teen Offenders in O.C. Camps Walking Away

Increases in juvenile crime and budget problems are forcing Orange County to place teen-agers convicted of felonies--most of whom are gang members--into minimum-security camps from which they are escaping at a pace of about five per week.

In the first six months of the year, more than 130 youths have literally walked away from the county’s three minimum-security juvenile correctional facilities, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

These minimum-security camps, which can hold 310 inmates, are packed with more than 300 convicted felons--70% of whom are believed to be gang members, with 77% identified as involved in drugs, according to a County Probation Department study completed earlier this year.

While the majority of those who flee are picked up not far from camp or within days in their neighborhoods, other escapees commit crimes before they are caught or leave the area.

Officials say there really is little to prevent the convicted juveniles from walking away from the three minimum-security facilities, two of which are unfenced. Unarmed counselors at the camps are told not to put themselves in danger to stop an escape.

“We are seeing more crimes involving juveniles, and the degree of violence is significantly greater,” said Lt. Robert Helton, a spokesman for the Santa Ana Police Department. “But sometimes, you are forced to--because of the numbers--put them into” minimum-security camps.

In theory, juveniles sentenced by the courts are supposed to be sent to facilities appropriate to the crimes they have committed, with the Probation Department placing the least dangerous in the minimum-security camps.

But a growing number of serious crimes involving juveniles, coupled with a shortage of maximum-security facilities, has forced county officials to send ever more dangerous kids to the unfenced camps. Teen-agers who are guilty of gang-related crimes, burglaries, armed assaults, drug offenses or other felonies are frequently assigned to unlocked facilities.

Those convicted of the most violent crimes are sent either to the state-run California Youth Authority or the county’s Juvenile Hall in Orange--a jail-like facility with 344 beds.

State and local maximum-security jails have enough room to hold youths convicted of the most violent crimes, such as murder, rape, assault with a deadly weapon and serious armed robberies, said Francisco Briseno, presiding judge at Juvenile Hall. But those sites too are jammed.

Probation Department officials say it is a top priority to create more spaces in Juvenile Hall. Despite that commitment, half the beds in a 60-bed wing that opened there in April remain empty because there is not enough money to fully staff the unit.

Sometimes the result is a shortage of appropriate space for the more serious criminals, with some who would go there being sent instead to the minimum-security camps at the Joplin Youth Center near Rancho Santa Margarita, the Los Pinos Conservation Camp near Lake Elsinore, or the Youth Guidance Center in Santa Ana.

In mid-June, a 14-year-old who had escaped from Joplin Youth Center was arrested in a home-invasion robbery in Westminster. He and four other armed teen-agers burst into a townhouse, tied up the occupants and ransacked the house. They are being held on 17 felony counts, including armed robbery and child endangerment, for allegedly aiming pistols at a 3-year-old girl.

“It does appear that minors are becoming involved in increasingly serious offenses. . . . It is incredible, really,” said Briseno, who each morning reads a thick logbook detailing the latest juvenile cases. “Obviously, with 700 beds (in the county’s juvenile justice system), that is not enough for the number of kids out there” committing crimes.

Homicides involving youths rose from 11 in 1989 to 28 in 1991. Also in 1991, prosecutors sought to try 145 juveniles arrested for serious crimes as adults, more than double the 69 juvenile cases transferred to adult courts in 1990.

This rising tide of juvenile criminals has to be absorbed in a system that is packed to the rafters. The 8,000 beds reserved for the most serious juvenile offenders in the state-run California Youth Authority system are full. Juvenile Hall, designed for 344 inmates, held 352 last week. The 15-bed juvenile wing at Orange County Jail is full and had a waiting list of more than 50 last week.

The Probation Department in February completed a study recommending that the capacity of the 344-bed Juvenile Hall be increased more than 20% by 1995 to keep pace with need. The study also said the county needs an additional 56 beds at the low-security camps.

“That may not even be enough,” said Stephanie Lewis, deputy chief probation officer. The Los Pinos Conservation Camp is a correctional facility deep inside the wooded and rugged Cleveland National Forest. The 125 youths held there have a weekly regimen that includes various labor projects and state-accredited high school classes.

They sleep in four dormitories, about 32 in each building. John Bowater, director of the camp, said that because counselers have seen an increase in escapes from Los Pinos in the last seven months, they have doubled evening patrols through the sleeping quarters.

Although the facilities are staffed 24 hours a day, offenders who want to leave can usually find an opportune time to make a break for it. Officials who operate those camps refer to youths who escape simply as “walkaways,” because it is so easy.

“A kid can literally walk away,” said Probation Department spokesman Rod Speer. “Most occur at night when you don’t see them or when you are distracted.”

Staff members at the facilities do not have arrest powers beyond the camps’ perimeters and generally do not pursue escapees. An internal Probation Department study this spring found that the unlocked correctional facilities have had about 280 escapes over a two-year period through April of this year.

“At Los Pinos they crawl out the window at night,” Lewis said. “There are no bars on the windows.” She said that because the camp is on U.S. Department of Agriculture property, there are restrictions on installing bars.

The Youth Guidance Center in Santa Ana, which has seen an average of five escapes per month over the last two years, is surrounded by a 10-foot chain-link fence, in which a gate opens when cars pull up. Staff members are instructed not to chase an escapee beyond that fence and potentially into traffic.

When an escape is made from any juvenile facility, the Sheriff’s Department is alerted, as are municipal police. Officials say many escapees are picked up before they ever get back to their communities. Additionally, a great number of the escapees return to their neighborhoods only to be tracked down there by police.

“I am not that concerned about walkaways,” Briseno said. “A great percentage of these kids are not a threat to the community and are returned to the facility within days. But if a kid goes out and commits a violent crime, then that is alarming.”

Police say, however, that escaped youths frequently resort to criminal means after breaking free. Al Butler, a Garden Grove police detective, said that recently his department has been receiving about one or two notices a week informing it that a juvenile from that city is missing from the camps.

Butler said it frustrates the police to see these young criminals go through a revolving door and get back on the street.

“And if you are a (crime) victim . . . in the community and all of a sudden they are out by escape or other means, that is pretty upsetting,” he said.

Santa Ana’s Lt. Helton said an escapee can be “desperate and need access to money or transportation . . . then there is always the chance that they are committing crimes and re-victimizing citizens.”

Probation officials said, however, that the system actually does what it is supposed to do for most offenders who are reforming themselves through the educational services and counseling offered at the camps. Such success is measured in the 70% of the first-time offenders who never return after their release, said both Lewis and Briseno.

“The fact is that most kids are reachable,” Briseno said.

The camps offer gang-intervention and drug counseling as well as a full day of school curriculum and various labor projects.

“I don’t think locking a kid up does any good for anybody. If they come to us with a desire to return to school or get a job, I say, ‘Why not give them a chance?’ ” Briseno said.

Young Criminals

Convicted children aged 17 and younger are escaping from county custody at the rate of almost one a day this year, and today’s juvenile delinquents are committing more murders.

ESCAPES Month: Number January: 20 February: 16 March: 20 April: 30 May: 22 June*: 23 * As of June 19

MURDERS BY MINORS

Murders by juveniles have more than doubled in two years. Year: Number 1989: 11 1990: 20 1991: 28

BEING TREATED AS ADULTS

Number of juveniles prosecutors sought to try as adults for violent crimes: Year: Number 1989: 64 1990: 69 1991: 145 Sources: Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Juvenile Court records