By Vanguard Staff
Key points:
- Los Angeles County fails to provide meaningful education to incarcerated youth, a new report reveals.
- The Education Justice Coalition calls for immediate reform of the county’s juvenile system.
- County leaders are urged to invest in community-based alternatives to incarceration.
LOS ANGELES — A sweeping new report by the Education Justice Coalition lays bare what advocates describe as decades of systemic neglect by Los Angeles County in its treatment of incarcerated youth, particularly in its failure to provide meaningful educational opportunities. The report, titled Who Has the Power? Chronicling Los Angeles County’s Systemic Failures to Educate Incarcerated Youth, was released August 5 and can be accessed here.
The Education Justice Coalition (EJC), which includes organizations such as the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, Public Counsel, Disability Rights California, the Youth Justice Education Clinic at Loyola Law School, Arts for Healing and Justice Network, and the Children’s Defense Fund–California, calls on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to take immediate action to reform a juvenile system described in the report as failing in both oversight and accountability.
“All youth in California, including youth who are incarcerated, have the fundamental right to an education,” said Vivian Wong, director of the Youth Justice Education Clinic at Loyola Law School and one of the report’s co-authors. “But over the years, federal and local agencies have found L.A. County out of compliance with minimum education standards for youth in its custody.”
The report comes on the heels of mounting legal and regulatory scrutiny of L.A. County’s juvenile detention system. In July, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a motion to place the county’s juvenile facilities into receivership, citing “glacial” progress toward compliance with a 2021 stipulated judgment that mandated improvements in education, safety and access to health services.
According to the report, youth held at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in 2023–24 experienced some of the worst educational outcomes in the state. Only one in three young people incarcerated at Los Padrinos graduated from high school. Nearly one in four were suspended, and 14 percent—79 students—were chronically absent, missing more than four weeks of the school year despite being confined on-site. These figures stand in stark contrast to statewide suspension rates, which hovered around 3.2 percent during the same year, according to the California School Dashboard.
Testimonies from incarcerated youth provide a damning illustration of how the educational system within county facilities routinely fails to meet even minimal standards.
“We didn’t learn. The teachers wouldn’t do anything,” said a youth leader who was incarcerated at Los Padrinos in 2024. “The teachers would hand us a packet that we do over and over and over. […] I get that we have a variety of age groups in one unit, but I was already in high school. It’s not fair to be learning about vowels and nouns like we’re dumb.”
Another youth, Dovontray Farmer, recalled being forced into so-called “gladiator fights” orchestrated by probation staff, where youth were pitted against each other in exchange for basic privileges. “If you win, they respect you. If you lose, you’re voted off the island,” Farmer said. “The higher-ups let others take your food and do whatever to that person.”
The report documents how the county’s juvenile education system—administered by the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE)—fails to meet basic educational standards. According to LACOE’s own Local Control and Accountability Plan for 2022–23, only 4 percent of students met or exceeded state standards in English language arts, and just 2 percent did so in mathematics.
Despite these figures, the report notes, LACOE categorized these metrics as “successes.” Further compounding the problem, youth with disabilities face particularly dire outcomes. At Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, nearly 45 percent of students with disabilities were suspended during the 2023–24 school year. At Afflerbaugh-Page Camp, the suspension rate for this group exceeded 64 percent.
The report also highlights that probation officers regularly remove students from classrooms or conduct private meetings during instructional hours. Teachers are often underqualified or absent altogether, with only two of nine classrooms at Barry J. Nidorf staffed by full-time teachers during a 2022 site visit by the Probation Oversight Commission.
“The education provided in these facilities is generally far below expectations,” the POC stated in a 2022 education report, which described classrooms where students spent time watching YouTube videos or repeating lessons far below grade level.
Probation’s chronic staffing shortages, deteriorating infrastructure, and allegations of abuse have contributed to a growing public demand for systemic reform. These issues prompted the closure of multiple facilities, including Central Juvenile Hall and parts of Barry J. Nidorf. In March, 30 Los Padrinos probation officers were indicted on felony charges for orchestrating or allowing 69 instances of youth-on-youth violence in what prosecutors described as organized “gladiator fights.”
The report points to a persistent pattern: when youth are incarcerated, they are forcibly disenrolled from their community schools and transferred to LACOE-run court schools. Upon release, students often face resistance or outright exclusion when attempting to re-enroll in their schools of origin. This educational instability, coupled with the stigma of incarceration, frequently pushes students into alternative or continuation schools, further compounding barriers to success.
Elida Ledesma, executive director of the Arts for Healing and Justice Network, emphasized the need for urgent intervention. “Young people have been telling us what they need, and the county needs to start showing up for them,” she said. “Our report provides the county a blueprint of systemic solutions to address its systemic failures. It’s time for us to hold our county leaders accountable.”
The coalition’s primary policy recommendation is for the county to fully implement Youth Justice Reimagined, a care-first initiative passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors in 2020. The plan envisions an alternative to incarceration centered on youth development, restorative justice, and community-based support.
Despite committing $75 million to the model, the Board of Supervisors has yet to fully fund or implement its provisions. In the interim, youth continue to suffer from low graduation rates, missed instructional time, and a lack of access to special education services. According to the report, students owed hundreds of hours of compensatory education in 2023 due to missed instructional time, with no clear plan from the county to provide it.
The report concludes by urging county leaders to invest in community-based alternatives to incarceration, ensure access to meaningful education for all detained youth, and establish mechanisms for transparency and community-led oversight.
“We believe that all young people—regardless of their background or system involvement—deserve the opportunity to learn, grow, and thrive,” the report states. “The County must act now.”
