San Francisco would be the first major U.S. city to shut down its juvenile detention center, after lawmakers voted to close the facility by the end of 2021, The Guardian reports. The city must create a new program for youth offenders that will include a secure facility, but one focused on rehabilitation. The facility should feel “more like a school or a wellness center rather than a jail or a prison”, said city supervisor Hillary Ronen, a sponsor of the legislation. The push to shut down the city’s juvenile detention center came as youth crime and juvenile felony arrests dropped throughout the state. San Francisco continued to spend $13 million a year on a facility that remained, at times, three-quarters empty, Ronen said.
For the youths stuck inside, studies have showed the damage that incarceration can do to personal development. “It just doesn’t make sense any more in this day or age, with all our modern understanding of the youth brain, to keep using these outdated modes that are extremely expensive,” she said. Eight of the 11 city lawmakers co-signed the legislation. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that city spent $300,000 per youth in juvenile detention. Twenty-seven years ago, city Supervisor Shamann Walton was one of those kids in juvenile hall, in custody for crimes like armed robbery and possession of a firearm. As an elected official, he visited the center and realized the experience was almost exactly the same as it had been for him as a kid. “You’re still walking the line, you’re still sleeping on concrete, you’re still doing workbooks and not working with a teacher, you’re still spending more time in your room, isolated, not having the opportunity for mental health help, or to gain life skills or social skills,” he said. “Something needed to change.”