Tag Archives: WorldNews

After Feds Leave, Pepper Spray Use Skyrockets Again in LA’s Juvenile Justice System

shame and sham

Just a few years after Los Angeles County exited a monitoring agreement with the Department of Justice, the county’s probation department has seen a return of rampant use of pepper spray in settling altercations and other misbehavior at juvenile detention facilities.

According to a presentation by the LA County Probation Department at Thursday’s Probation Commission meeting, incidents involving pepper spray at the county’s Central Juvenile Hall increased 338 percent from 2015 to 2017.

Pepper spray use also increased by 214 percent at the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey and by 192 percent at the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar during that time, according to Luis Dominguez, acting deputy director for the Probation Department.

Pepper spray, also known as oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray, is currently only used at the county’s three juvenile halls and the set of juvenile detention camps located at the Challenger complex in Lancaster.

In preparing preliminary data for the Board of Supervisors, Dominguez said that the increase in the use of pepper spray has mirrored an increase in the number of violent incidents at camps and halls, including both youth-on-youth violence and altercations involving probation staff and youth.

“OC spray is being used as a direct result of increased assaultive behaviors and violence by youth,” Dominguez said.

But a pending piece of state legislation may force the county to figure out another way to deescalate situations.

Implementing the Probation Department’s Use-of-Force Policy

The statistics shared by the Probation Department also revealed that probation officers’ use of pepper spray is an increasingly popular option for situations when officers at camps and halls must use force to break up or prevent violent incidents.

The department uses a six-tiered system called safe crisis management to determine the appropriate use of force when responding to an incident at one of its juvenile facilities. Levels one, two and three include low-level interventions for responding to youth, such as offering a verbal warning to a youth, stepping between two youth in a fight or placing hands on a youth to stop an altercation.

Levels four and five are considered high-level interventions, such as forcing a youth to the ground.

Level six is reserved for pepper spray.

In 2017, there were 1,629 safety incidents at county juvenile halls, according to Dominguez. Probation staff members used low-level interventions — levels one, two and three — 52 percent of the time. High-level physical interventions — levels four and five — occurred 16 percent of the time, and pepper spray was used in 32 percent of the cases.

The percentage of incidents involving pepper spray is even higher at juvenile camps. According to internal county documents obtained by The Chronicle of Social Change, the department used pepper spray in 42 percent of incidents at juvenile camps in 2016.

After Federal Oversight

Over the past 15 years, LA County’s juvenile probation department has twice come under federal oversight after Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations, once for conditions at its juvenile halls in 2004 and another for its camps in 2008. Both times, the department was cited for excessive and inappropriate use of pepper spray on youth, among other issues.

LA County successfully concluded DOJ monitoring of its camps in 2015 after making progress with its policies around the use of pepper spray at its facilities. According to the terms of its last settlement agreement, probation officers must now weigh each pepper spray canister after each use and on a yearly basis.

The experience of being pepper sprayed is not uncommon for youth at probation facilities, either because of a physical altercation or a result of getting caught in the cross-fire. A series of interviews of youth at Probation-run camps and halls conducted by the Violence Intervention Program in 2016 found that 20 percent of youth in the care of the Probation Department had been pepper sprayed, including one young woman who was pregnant at the time.

Most described the experience as a burning sensation, with others reporting painful welts and difficulty breathing.

“You feel like your body is on fire,” said one youth detained at Camp Smith.

Searching for an Alternative to Pepper Spray

The increase in the use of pepper spray at LA County juvenile facilities comes at a time when the practice could be phased out at the state level. California is one of only five states that allows guards at juvenile facilities to wield the chemical spray, and a new bill by state Assemblyman Ed Chau (D) introduced this year would place strict limitations on its use in juvenile detention facilities.

That left some at the Probation Commission meeting wondering about alternatives to pepper spray.

“At least in 2011, there were almost 90 percent of juvenile facilities in the United States that prohibited the use of pepper spray or any kind of chemical intervention in any facility involving youth,” said Commissioner Cyn Yamashiro. “It seems like the writing is on the wall, and it has been for a while, that pepper spray is not going to be an option for the department moving forward.

“What’s the department going to come up with and why aren’t we employing that now instead of capsicum?”

Probation officials point to a training grant from Georgetown University’s Center on Juvenile Justice Reform that is helping to bring the department in line with best practices in the field, along with the department’s ongoing effort to implement a new model of trauma-informed care at the department’s flagship facility, Campus Kilpatrick in Malibu.

But they also say there is still a need for pepper spray as a deterrent.

“Just implementing trauma-informed-care training is not going to assist us in dealing the physical challenges that we’re facing with our youth,” Dominguez said.

According to Probation Department officials, the number of violent incidents since Kilpatrick opened last summer is about 10. Commissioner Jackie Caster hopes that the county can expand the therapeutic design and practices employed at Kilpatrick, which is based on the “Missouri Model” of small-cottage facilities employing positive youth development programs.

“I think this is an argument for speeding up the replication of the Kilpatrick model because obviously what we’ve got at the other facilities is clearly not working and certainly doesn’t sound rehabilitative,” Caster said.


Image: Central Juvenile Hall

This story was written by Jeremy Loudenback for The Chronicle of Social Change, a national news outlet that covers issues affecting vulnerable children, youth and their families. Sign up for their newsletter or follow The Chronicle of Social Change on Facebook or Twitter.

“Brexit wouldn’t have happened without Cambridge Analytica”

Christopher Wylie is the brains behind Cambridge Analytica (CA), the data analytics company that is being investigated for its role in the Donald Trump election campaign and the Brexit vote. The 28-year-old “gay Canadian vegan,” as he describes himself, put the most effective data mining machinery at the service of politics, but was shocked by how it was abused. Wylie has since exposed CA and Facebook for secretly mining the personal information of millions of Facebook accounts. After serving as a source for The Guardian and The New York Times, Wylie sat down with a small group of European journalists to talk about privacy, the failure of Facebook, and political interference.

Seguir leyendo.

Orange snow transforms eastern Europe into ‘Mars’

How do you deny how connected the earth and its climate is?

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Dust and sand from storms in northern Africa carpet ski resorts in Russia and Romania

Dust from a sandstorm in the Sahara desert is causing snow in eastern Europe to turn orange, transforming mountainous regions of Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria and Romania into Mars-like landscapes.

The unusual scenes are believed to be created by a mix of sand, dust and pollen particles stirred up and swept across from storms in northern Africa. According the meteorologists, the phenomenon occurs roughly every five years.

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Salvadoran migration to the US in numbers

Good policy analysis requires good data.   With little commentary, here is a collection of the best data estimates I can assemble related to migration of individuals from El Salvador to the United States:

  • Estimated population living in El Salvador in 2017 — 6,582,000
    Source: El Salvador DIGESTYC
  • Estimated number of Salvadoran immigrants living in the US as of 2015 — 1,420,000
    Source: Pew Research Center
  • Estimated number of second generation Salvadorans in the US (at least one parent born in El Salvador) as of 2015 — 935,000
    Source: Migration Policy Institute
  • Estimated number of Salvadorans currently in US without legal documentation:  725,000
    Source:  Pew Research Center
  • Number of Salvadorans granted permanent residence in US (green cards) between October 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017:  18,800.
    Source: Pew Research Center
  • Estimated number of Salvadoran who re-enrolled for Temporary Protected Status by March 19, 2018 deadline:  175,000
    Source: El Salvador Foreign Ministry
  • Salvadoran youth who are recipients of DACA protection:  25,900
    Source:  USCIS
  • Salvadorans deported from the US back to El Salvador:

    January 1, 2017- December 31, 2017 – 15,691
    Source: El Salvador DGME

    January 1, 2018 – March 22, 2018 — 3129
    Source: El Salvador DGME

  • Unaccompanied minors from El Salvador apprehended at southwest US border:
    10/1/2015 – 9/30/2016  — 17,512
    10/1//2016 – 9/30/2017 — 9,143
    10/1/2018 –  2/28/20181,385 (3,324 annualized) 

    Persons in family units of at least one child with an adult apprehended at southwest US border:
    10/1/2015 – 9/30/2016  — 27,114
    10/1//2016 – 9/30/2017 — 24,122
    10/1/2018 –  2/28/20184,197 (10,072 annualized) Source: US Customs & Border Patrol  

  • Among all those persons worldwide who were born in El Salvador and now live either in El Salvador or elsewhere – 23% reside in the U.S
    Source:  Pew Research Center

Much could be said about these numbers, but I will only point out two items.   First, note the fairly dramatic reduction in levels of child and family migration across the southwest US border since October 2015 as measured by apprehensions.  Second, note the approximately 18,800 persons deported since January 1, 2017 and compare that to the 144,360 pending deportation cases against Salvadoran nationals and the additional 200,000 Salvadorans who are losing TPS next year.   El Salvador is facing a wave of returnees much, much larger than it is currently experiencing. 

Marchers across the US united in plan for pro-gun politicians: ‘Vote them out’

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Thousands of people rallied in Washington DC and other US cities on Saturday, expressing clear outlines for action on gun reform

For four minutes and 25 seconds, 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez held a crowd of hundreds of thousands in the nation’s capital in near total silence. With tears rolling down her cheeks, intermittently closing her eyes, the teenager’s stillness told its own story.

Related: Thousands join March for Our Lives anti-gun protests around the world

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Revealed: the ties that bind Canadian data firm AIQ to Leave campaign in referendum

No place to run or hide – hear that #45?

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Role of remote data affiliate raises questions over relationship between Brexit groups

Cambridge Analytica has undisclosed links to the Canadian digital firm AggregateIQ that played a pivotal role in the official Vote Leave campaign in 2016, which was headed by the environment secretary Michael Gove and the foreign secretary Boris Johnson, the Observer has learned.

Christopher Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower, has revealed that as well as playing a part in setting up the firm – which is now facing increasing scrutiny from investigators on both sides of the Atlantic over its role in harvesting Facebook data – he was also a central figure in setting up AIQ, which accounted for 40% of Vote Leave’s campaign budget.

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Dinner party soundtracker to timeless muse: exploring the Sade complex

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The enigmatic musician remains an influence on modern stars such as Drake and Beyoncé. As she releases her first single in seven years we explore why

Picture the scene: A dinner party. It could be any dinner party, anywhere in North America or Europe, taking place at any point in the last 30 years, but this one happens to be a fictional dinner party thrown by Nathan (James Tupper) and Bonnie Carlson (Zoë Kravitz) in Big Little Lies, the hit TV series about miserable rich people living in coastal California.

“I love this music. Bonnie, is this Adele?” asks Reese Witherspoon’s character, Madeline, ever-so-slightly loose from the half a Xanax she popped en route.

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