San Diego —
At a glance, San Diego County’s new $130 million Youth Transition Campus looks like a school campus, with clusters of one-story buildings, angled roofs and an open layout waiting for grass and trees.
A closer look reveals familiar features for juvenile detention centers, such as the institutional-grade locking doors on sleeping quarters and a 27-foot-high sound wall and fence around the property.
But there are no iron bars. No razor wire, like at San Diego County’s current juvenile hall in Kearny Mesa.
That’s because this campus was designed to reconcile the original requirement to detain young people in custody with the need to rehabilitate them before they return to society.