On Monday, at an unexpectedly-packed meeting held at the City of Carson Community Center, the members of LA County’s Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council (JJCC) voted to pass a budget plan that many youth advocates are calling “historic.” The plan lays out how LA County will spend the approximately $28 to $31 million in Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act funds that Los Angeles receives each year from the State of California. Yet, the priorities embraced by this budget plan are dramatically different than those of past years.

The Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act (JJCPA), was created by the Schiff-Cárdenas Crime Prevention Act of 2000 (AB 1913), in order “to provide a stable funding source for local juvenile justice programs aimed at curbing crime and delinquency among at-risk youth.”

The funds, which are allocated on a per capita basis to the state’s 56 participating counties (Alpine and Sierra counties have traditionally opted out), are mandated to be spent to fund a range of evidence-based programs “that have been demonstrated to be effective.” The largest part of the funds is supposed to be allocated to community-based organizations (CBOs) that have proven track records for helping kids.

But in past years in LA County, that’s not how things worked out.

Last month, however, a fed up LA County Board of Supervisors made the unprecedented move of passing a motion that made money’s vote possible by giving the bulk of the power to choose haw the big pot of JJCPA money should be spent to the JJCC, a mostly unknown voting body that was radically reconstitutedthree years ago, and is now crammed with youth experts and advocates.

Prior to this shift,  the JJCPA funds (along with the JJCC), were almost entirely controlled by LA County Probation, a situation that the board decided wasn’t working.

Under various past probation administrations, alarming portions of the funds were allowed to pile up unspent. Or in other cases, big slices of the funds were spent on questionable programs such as so-called voluntary probation. The combination of misspending and hoarding caused ongoing frustration among local youth advocates and the board of supervisors.

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