By Caleb Lunetta
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — A years-long effort to replace the former Juvenile Hall facilities in San Diego County has reached its final milestone, as the new Youth Transition Campus in Kearny Mesa prepares to open next week to house and rehabilitate juvenile offenders in a new way.
Although the new $98 million campus stands on the same spot the previous juvenile hall had stood since the 1950s, it now offers an environment that focuses on rehabilitation and therapy to create better outcomes for high-risk youth, officials said Thursday.
The new facility — set to officially open July 26 — is designed to house the county’s “pre-adjudicated” youth, or those juveniles who are accused of violent offenses yet still awaiting their trial. Next door sits the campus for the county’s “post-adjudicated youth,” or those who are serving sentences of 85 days to 12 months.
The committed youth campus, which represented the first phase of the overall Youth Transition Campus project, was opened in 2022.
Both campuses have similarly designed healing spaces, sports and recreation areas, and larger visiting areas for families, officials said.
“Our environment plays a crucial role in how we show up in the world,” county Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday. “And with this campus, we shift the narrative in offering a more holistic and rehabilitative approach.”
Officials said the new campus had been in the works for more than six years as designers worked to address longstanding issues with the previous facility that “was designed to hold large numbers of youths together, but offered limited spaces for rehabilitative programming and behavioral health services,” Chief Probation Officer Tamika Nelson said.
The new campus is designed to not only house and rehabilitate as many as 72 juveniles who are awaiting trial, but it also features state-of-the-art classrooms that allow youth in custody who are deemed low-risk to participate in a career and technical education programs, from woodshop to culinary to graphic arts classes, that were created to help offenders transition out of incarceration and into the workforce.
Officials said the previous juvenile hall living areas had been designed, and maintained, around an outdated correctional model that had 40 juvenile offenders living together in a housing module with low ceilings, loud noises and little privacy. County leaders said they sought to design the new living areas to be calming with a more “home-like” feeling.
In the video below, Gordon Graham discusses the isolation of juvenile offenders and the importance of having a solid policy to guide correctional efforts.
The new living areas consist of six cottages designed to each provide 12 youth offenders with their own individual sleeping quarters and bathrooms, officials said. The private rooms around the edge of the building open up into a shared kitchenette and furnished common room, complete with a television, books and phones to call home. Nearby are offices for the in-house mental health specialists and corrections supervisors.
“It is made to feel calming and feel like home with small places to live, lots of open areas and natural life to foster positive behavior,” Nelson said.
The combined cost of both phases of the project was approximately $210 million, officials said.
Officials said the East Mesa Juvenile Facility in Otay Mesa will remain open and house the Youth Development Academy, a more intensive rehabilitative program for youth up to age 25 who are serving longer sentences.
For decades, courts had placed these youth offenders who committed more serious crimes — such as murder or violent assault — in youth prisons run by the state of California. However, after years of calls from juvenile justice reformers, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law in 2020 ending that statewide program and ordered counties to take over their care beginning last year.
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