The story comes from KCLU’s podcast The One Oh One. You can listen to the full episode here.
At the Boys and Girls Club teen center in Oxnard, a group of youth are being coached through a boxing class. Outside of the ring some are practicing their jabs and inside others are warming up for a match.
Nearby is the basketball court where youngsters are shooting a few hoops..
The court is where you’ll often find Moises.
“I enjoy playing basketball, shooting hoops, getting mad because I'm losing or, you know, just appreciating those fun moments. It's a great way to get your mind off things,” he said.
Moises comes here often because he says he gets something very specific from the club.
“The reason why I kept on coming here was basically… it's not really like a freedom of what they let you do. It's basically like… it's more of a comfort,” said Moises.
He originally came to the Boys and Girls club not by choice – you see, he was actually required to attend by the juvenile detention system through a program called ERC or Evening Reporting Center.
“Before I was a troublemaker. And the reason why I was a troublemaker was because I didn't have anybody there for me the way I do now,” he said. “I was out there being dumb, making dumb decisions, stuff that I shouldn't have done”.
Moises says he was impulsive and that behavior led to him getting into trouble with law enforcement.
“I got in trouble with the cops and my life before the Boys and Girls Club was pretty miserable, I'm going to be honest with you,” he said.
Juvenile records are confidential so I don’t have exact details on what Moises did – he also kept those details pretty vague when I asked.
He did tell me he was required to attend 20 hours at the club. He did art classes, technology tutoring, sports and went through a drug prevention program.
Moises recently turned 18. His life has not been easy.
“I'm not living in the best situation. I am currently homeless,” he said. “I mean, it really is concerning, but it's not concerning because I've been through the same situation before. I've gotten, actually, used to it”.
Attending this club changed things for Moises, he says.
“I came here and there was actually people that showed that they cared,” said Moises.
All the teens that attend this club have mentors.
Oscar Arellano is the club’s unit director. He is a mentor to many, including Moises.
“That means they check up on them, see how they're doing, you know, not just here, but, you know, in school or whatever,” said Arellano. “So programming, mentoring. Dinner is a big bonding time for us. So everyone sits around, has dinner. The kids love to help serve dinner”.
They also have themed events around holidays and go on field trips.
Arellano says they even keep up to date on Moises’ high school football games so they can all go watch if they can.
“We like to support outside of the club as well. I always tell Moises, you know, let us know when your football game is because we want to go and support you,” he said.
Arellano says Moises came to the Boys and Girls Club from a gang related environment.
“As staff we don't really go into specifics about what they did to do their hours. What we do take note of is any gang affiliation just to make sure that there's no conflict between members. Our goal here for the ERC members is to let their guard down and be teens,” he said.
Arellano says he’s seen Moises blossom. He has let his guard down. He says he continues to push his mentee today – as we’ve learned Moises still comes to the club even though his required hours are long completed.
“I'm always on him. Sometimes I don't even ask him. I say, ‘Hey, we have a field trip. I need you to go. This is really good for you’, ‘Huh? What why?’ ‘Let's go’. So I push him. I really push him,” said Arellano.
“I found myself doing better. I found myself actually going out, actually going to events, actually going to concerts, going to places,” said Arellano.
Alternatives to incarceration
What Moises has experienced at the Boys and Girls Club is an alternative program to incarceration.
“When a kid goes to juvenile detention, they define themselves as a criminal, as a convict. When they come to the Boys and Girls Club they're a member. They're a positive kid doing great things for the community,” said Andrew Peake.
Peake is the Director of Advancement for the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Oxnard and Port Hueneme.
“What we've seen is when you connect young people to positive role models, both peer role models and adult role models, they flourish. Those role models don't always exist in a juvenile incarceration setting or traditionally did not exist in the juvenile incarceration setting. So putting them in a more positive environment helps them move past mistakes they've made and go on to a better future,” said Peake.
And this alternative experience is the whole point. It’s part of a shift that’s happened within juvenile detention laws in California over the last 20 years. A shift away from a reliance on incarcerating young people.
So big picture now – what do these changes look like in juvenile detention in Ventura County?
“We've only seen a decrease in the number of juveniles that are in custody,” said Carrie Vredenburgh. She is the Chief Deputy for the Ventura County Probation Agency.
She oversees everything involving juveniles within the agency – from detention to investigations and supervision – such as ankle monitoring.
Having been with the agency for 27 years she has seen the changes take place.
“I think what's improved is our understanding of who should remain in custody and who should not,” Vredenburgh said.
And that’s really the crux of what’s happened over the last two decades in California – a look at who should be incarcerated.
“How much of their behavior is normal adolescent and teenage behavior versus how much of it is actual criminal behavior where they need to maybe be removed from the community? And back in the day. A lot of kids were in custody for what would be normal teenage behavior,” said Vredenburgh.
For lower level offenses such as shoplifting, drug possession, constant absenteeism from school or tagging of buildings, there are new programs that focus on an alternative to detention.
“All sorts of efforts made to address kids in a different way,” said Vredenburgh. “So, many of those local law enforcement agencies have put in their own diversion programs. They're training their officers differently to look at what youth really need to be arrested and brought into custody versus, ‘Hey, I can give you an opportunity to go through this diversion program. And if you successfully complete it, your citation goes away’. The arrest is as though it never occurred”.
Something like what we saw at the Boys and Girls Club.
Data shows justice involvement for youth has decreased drastically
And this change in policy is reflected in the data.
The Haywood Burns Institute is a national nonprofit focused on eliminating racial and ethnic disparity. It has studied arrests and detention rates in Ventura County over the years.
They’ve observed the volume of youth arrested, referred for detention and actually detained has drastically decreased since 2009. A caveat though – they have seen disparities between minorities widen.
They told me via email that “overall, justice involvement is down for youth, but the disparities gaps have widened between Black and Latino youth compared to white youth.”
According to the Ventura County Probation Agency, as of November there were 76 youth in custody. Three white or Caucasian inmates and 70 Latino or Hispanic.
Census data shows the population of Latinos and Whites are pretty much equal in Ventura County.
The Burns Institute analyzed data from the California Department of Justice for the year 2018 – the most recent year they have. They found that over 500 Latinos were put into detention. That’s compared to 126 White juveniles.
Going inside juvenile detention in Ventura County
Back to the volume of youth incarcerated now and another way the change in incarcerating young people is illustrated is at the Ventura County Juvenile Facilities complex in Oxnard. This is where juveniles are detained in the county.
Construction of this facility was completed 20 years ago. It was built to hold 420 youth.
“We've never been anywhere near 420,” said Carrie Vredenburgh.
Today, as we have already learned, the facility detains between 70 and 80 youth.
Walking through the facility, there aren’t any bars, which is what many think of when they think of prison. Rather solid cinder block walls and secured doors leading between different sections.
Vredenburgh describes the facility like a campus, with its long hallways and large recreation yards with the neatly mowed green lawns.
“So this is the part where it makes me feel like a school. It really looks… with this large, vast park-like, soccer-field size grass area, there's a basketball hoop. It really says to me it's more of a community and a campus environment,” said Vredenburgh.
She says this is an aim across California – to make the facilities feel less detention-like.
“And more like a home-like environment because the idea surrounding that is that that's also going to impact and have a positive impact on the youth and their rehabilitation. So that's what we're headed towards,” said Vredenburgh.
There are different murals throughout the facility. There’s one inside a recreation room painted by juvenile detainees in 2019. It has a theme – ‘Freedom is the choice’ is inscribed on the wall. There’s a man painted with two different types of clothing on – split between the left and right side of his body.
“You have the choice whether you're going to be wearing the institutional attire or whether you're going to make a different choice and have yourself be wearing regular business attire out in the community,” said Vredenburgh, describing the mural.
Art is one of the programs they offer within detention. There’s also poetry, podcasting and sports. There’s school and mental health services – like programs that bring in miniature horses or dogs to help with anxiety, anger, or trauma. And the Boys and Girls Club opened their first club inside a California juvenile detention center here.
What detained youth say about changing laws
So, we have learned, California has moved away from a reliance on incarcerating youth. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some youth that the law says need to be detained.
They are the ones who have committed very serious crimes. Or as Vredenburgh describes it – have the highest needs.
“And I think that we see that these kids truly need the most amount of work, they need the most amount of intervention,” said Vredenburgh.
She says often they have endured trauma
“And they're a product of that, unfortunately. And they make choices based on what they've had to endure,” said Vredenburgh.
Those currently held at this detention facility range in age from 12-years-old to 23. If they were incarcerated for a purely juvenile offense they can stay at this facility up until the age of 25.
Their crimes range from failing to comply with probation terms, or continuing to use controlled substances and presenting a danger to themselves or others. There are also those who have committed sex offenses and even murder.
Next you’ll meet two young men incarcerated at this facility. Both have been in and out of detention from a really young age. There wasn’t an alternative to detention for them because of the serious nature of their crimes but I met them to find out if the programs inside detention are helping decrease the cycle of reincarceration.
Meet Daniel
I met with Daniel and Anthony individually, inside one of the rooms in the detention facility designed for family visitation. Toys for babies and toddlers are neatly laid out on the floor.
Daniel’s most recent incarceration began in April of this year. Many of the young people I spoke to for this story are vague about the exact actions that landed them in trouble (and remember juvenile records are confidential). Daniel just says…
“Bad choices. And just living, like, kind of outside of the box” he said.
Daniel did share he was involved in stealing a car, some probation violations and getting into fights while incarcerated. He also has a charge, which he didn’t elaborate on, currently working its way through the system.
“I'm fighting a charge in a case, so I don't know when I'm going to be released,” he said. “I'm possibly going to be here for a couple of years”.
Daniel says he got involved with a gang at the age of 11.
“And I’ve been a part of that lifestyle since now – 18 years old. So it's been quite a while,” he said.
He says being incarcerated has become part of that lifestyle.
So it's kind of, like, hard to not deal with being incarcerated because eventually it's either going to come your way, you know?” said Daniel
It comes with the gang lifestyle but it doesn’t mean it isn’t tough.
“Just cause – yeah we’re incarcerated doesn't mean we still can't feel things, you know? Like I get mad. Everybody does, you know?” said Daniel “I get sad. Everybody gets sad. I may not show it, I may not sit there and I let it be known that I'm sad or something like that. But yeah, there's times where I'm sitting in my cell – ‘What did I do wrong?’ You know? But at the same time, there's times where I’m like ‘What more can I do?’ Just got to sit here and tough it out, you know”.
Daniel does take part in some of the programs that are offered. He’s attending college and studying sociology. He’s also part of the basketball and soccer program.
But, he doesn’t believe that these programs and being in detention have worked when it comes to rehabilitating him.
“Being in detention I would say hasn't helped,” said Daniel. “Nah it hasn't helped me cause I'm still here, you know? If it were to have helped me, I wouldn't be sitting where I’m at, you know?”
Because of his pending case and the uncertainty around that, the future is a tricky thing for Daniel to think about. The present situation is more pressing.
“I'm worried about what I got to do in here, you know, worry about what I got to protect in here,” said Daniel.
Meet Anthony
Anthony says he has been in and out of juvenile detention since he was 11-years-old. He’s now 19. His most recent incarceration began about two years ago. Before that he did a separate three-year stint.
“Yeah I've been here a lot,” said Anthony. “Yeah, like around 20 or 20 times”.
Unlike Daniel, he does have a date when he could be eligible for release – May 5, 2025.
Anthony is very informed about his rights and the laws around juvenile detention. He quoted a few assembly bills to me that have affected his incarceration.
“Yeah, you got to know what's going on in court, you know,” said Anthony.
He is a little more open about the most recent crimes that landed him in detention.
“This time I got brought in for three armed robberies, two car jackings, possession of a weapon – like a gun. And possession of drugs with intent to sales. And a DUI,” said Anthony.
Anthony got involved in this lifestyle at around 10-years-old. Up until then he says he was actually doing really well at school.
“I was the head of the chess club,” said Anthony. “I was always the smartest kid in my class. I was doing high school work, like in fifth grade”.
But then his family circumstances changed.
“My dad – he went to Mexico. My biological mother – I never knew her. So it was just my grandmother and my older brother and me,” said Anthony. “And we were pretty broke. We were pretty poor.”
Living the three of them in one room Anthony felt he was taking up space and wanted to do something to contribute so he went to the streets, as he describes it.
“I started being an entrepreneur in a sense, making money to bring home and it all just kind of went downhill from there,” said Anthony. “But it's all right, you know, I learned a lot of things in this. Like through everything I went through I don't regret any of it. If I could do it again, I'd do it again”.
Regret is not something Anthony says he has. But he has experienced loss.
“There's a lot of things I wish never happened. Like, I've lost a lot of friends to this. But it made me the person that I am today, you know. And that's probably the part that I don't regret,” said Anthony.
Anthony’s lack of regret extends to his crimes.
“I'll be completely honest with you and I hope it doesn't affect the way you see me, you know, but no, I don't [have regrets about my crimes],” said Anthony. “I've felt bad like, you know when I'm like, ‘Damn, that's crazy. Like, you know, they were just there just doing their thing and this happened to them’. But like the way I see it, the way I've seen it since I was a kid is it's a dog eat dog world, you know. And others have to lose for others to succeed”.
That kind of thinking didn’t help when it came to his incarceration.
“For all my crimes I actually got sentenced to more years because the DA said I didn't have any remorse,” said Anthony. “But like yeah, like sometimes I do think back when I'm like, ‘Damn, none of this would have ever happened if I did this. Like none of this would have happened to those people if I just did this instead?’ But you'll go crazy thinking about stuff like that”.
While incarcerated Anthony is trying to turn his life around. He graduated high school at 16 and he’s getting a college degree in business management. He feels the practical programs in juvenile detention have been most helpful.
“When we can learn like a job and learn how to do stuff, like, that's better. So that way once we get out, we can know what to do,” said Anthony. “Some of us have been in here since we were kids, you know, and we're not getting out until we're adults”.
Anthony's long term goal is to be released to a California fire crew program created specifically for the formerly and currently incarcerated.
“It’s good, like the way I see it, I've done a lot of bad stuff in my life, you know, and I can finally do something right,” said Anthony. “Like my daughter could be like, 'Oh, that's my dad, that my Dad right there’, you know?”
Anthony’s daughter is six-years-old. He speaks to her everyday but he decided with her mother that she wouldn’t visit him while he’s in juvenile detention. He hasn’t seen her in two years.
If Anthony can stay out of trouble while in juvenile detention he has a path out of this cycle of incarceration and a possible May 5, 2025 release date.
New chances for youth
Moises, Daniel and Anthony – their stories are different examples of a juvenile detention system trying to provide more chances to young people.
“Just know that there are people here who do want help,” said Anthony. “And it's just a thank you for the people that do... That do see us as people. That’s it”.
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