Filed
12:00 p.m. EST
02.21.2026
From California to New York, juvenile detention systems struggle to protect the youth they house.
Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar, Calif.
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On a sunny day in late January, Judge Peter A. Hernandez briefly interrupted testimony in his Los Angeles County courtroom, sounding genuinely baffled.
In the case before him, the state of California was arguing that the Los Angeles County Probation Department, which runs the county’s juvenile detention halls, had done such a poor job, and for so long, that the court should authorize a leadership takeover — called a receivership.
The lawsuit over detention conditions, first filed in 2021, was assigned to Hernandez in the summer of 2024. And despite dozens of hours of prior testimony in his court on the minutiae of daily operations, Hernandez said it was the first time he’d been briefed about how the department had failed to master the most basic of workplace functions. Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa testified that until recently, “there was no database in which people were being scheduled,” no dependable way to track which employees were supposed to show up, who called out, and where staff were posted once a shift began. Viera Rosa said in some cases, between callouts and staff medically unable to perform essential functions, as much as 85% of employees had been effectively unavailable.
“I’m a bit troubled and alarmed,” Hernandez said. “It’s kind of hard for me to understand how this kept going with no one saying anything.”
While scheduling databases may sound banal, many of the scandals that have long-plagued juvenile justice — not just in LA County, but across the country — turn on these kinds of dry, administrative questions. Basic staffing problems have led to violations of standards and safety in juvenile detention centers in many states.
When excessive callouts lead to understaffing, other employees call out too, afraid that they will be left vulnerable to violence. Then others call out to avoid being “held over” past their shifts to cover for their colleagues’ missed shifts, LA County officials have said. It’s the very definition of a vicious cycle, and it has devastating effects on youth in the care of the county.
Without adequate staff, youth miss school, recreation and medical appointments. They spend more time stuck in cells, which breeds frustration and sometimes violence, again feeding back into the loop, according to the testimony of Michael Dempsey, the independent monitor who was hired in 2025 to oversee youth detention in the county. At the end of last year, the department had a 36% vacancy rate for sworn officer positions, with 70% of all new hires leaving within their first year. The union that represents corrections officers says the churn is a function of untenable work conditions, along with mismanagement.
Los Angeles County’s juvenile justice system is hardly alone. New York Focus reported earlier this month that understaffing in New York’s state-run facilities has grown so severe that one site was operating with roughly one-tenth of the staff it was supposed to have. In interviews with the news outlet, staff members said the chronic shortages pushed them into 24-hour shifts and forced them to leave youth locked in cells for long stretches. Like in Los Angeles, these long spells of confinement sometimes left young people with no other option than to relieve themselves in bottles, bags and trash bins when no one is available to let them go to the bathroom, according to staff.
Asked about the conditions, one frustrated employee said to a reporter, “Why are we here? We are part of the problem,” before breaking into tears.
New York regulations generally restrict youth isolation and require additional approval when confinement extends beyond a day. A federal class-action lawsuit filed earlier this year alleges that a kind of de facto solitary confinement frequently persists simply because there is not enough staff to run the facility safely.
In Tennessee’s Shelby County, home to Memphis, unchecked youth isolation has also been a central scandal. An investigation by the news organization MLK50 last year found that youth held in the county’s detention center between 2023 and 2025 were often kept in “23-and-1” conditions — confined in their cells for 23 hours a day. In response, county leaders have floated a new local ordinance to limit juvenile isolation. But some youth advocates are pushing back on the proposal, arguing that it contains no way for the county to enforce the limits, and no independent oversight.
Multiple detention centers in North Carolina have also routinely held youth in their cells from 22.5 to 24 hours a day, according to a report released Thursday by a local advocacy group. The findings follow a federal lawsuit filed in 2024 that claimed that teenagers held at Cabarrus Regional Juvenile Detention Center, near Charlotte, endured this level of isolation for weeks or even months, let out mainly for brief showers, limited recreation and short stretches of school. State officials denied the report’s findings to NC Newsline.
Staffing shortages also played a key role in other North Carolina juvenile detention facilities. The state’s largest detention center in Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, was closed in 2022 due to insufficient staff, and the teenagers who were housed there were transferred to other facilities. Last month, North Carolina Health News reported that some advocates for youth want the facility to reopen, arguing that sending teenagers long distances away from their families is damaging to their mental health.
“At a really critical point in their growth, they have to be shipped away, and they don’t have access to those people that are central in their lives,” Mecklenburg County Commissioner Susan Rodriguez-McDowell told the outlet.
While officials and experts worry about the mental health toll of long-distance placements and prolonged isolation, detention is increasingly serving as a backstop for the youth mental-health-care system.
A survey released last week by the office of Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff found that, across 25 states, 75 juvenile facilities reported incarcerating young people who were eligible for release to mental health programs because actual programming was not available. In addition, 20 facilities surveyed reported holding youth beyond their expected release date or the duration of their sentence, due to a lack of suitable mental health placement.
“This should shock America’s conscience,” Ossoff said. “Children with special needs, locked up for extended time, instead of getting the mental health care that they need.”
