In less than 60 days, LA County will have to transfer some 300 incarcerated youth to a new facility after a state board found juvenile halls in Sylmar and Lincoln Heights “unsuitable.” One activist working with families said they fear that the new facility won’t improve conditions.
Last fall, the Board of Supes approved a proposal to dismantle juvenile halls and probation camps. Five months later, the money to fund the plan isn’t in the County CEO's initial budget proposal.
This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
For more than half a century, 441 Bauchet Street has been the address where Los Angeles’ most stark social and environmental inequalities converge. It’s the location of L.A.’s Men’s Central Jail, the largest facility in the most populated county jail system in the country. On any given day, about 5,000 people are incarcerated there.
A block south from the jail is the 101 freeway, one of the most traveled highways in America, which generates dangerous levels of air pollution linked to a slew of birth defects. A block east is the L.A. River, home to at least 20 different pollutants, from feces to oil, at levels that violate federal standards. Another 100 yards east is the SP Railyard and Union Pacific Transportation Center, which operate at all hours, receiving big rig diesel trucks that spew an estimated 40 tons of particulate matter into the air annuall