SANTA CRUZ >> Despite some pushback from local youth advocacy groups, Santa Cruz County is on its way to establishing a juvenile camp program in Felton as part of an effort to keep youth services local and reduce expenses.

The county Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed at its meeting Tuesday to establish the Redwoods Coastal Academy at its Juvenile Hall facility off of Graham Hill Road in the San Lorenzo Valley. While the programs are known statewide as “ranch camps,” they do not necessarily involve an environmental component or stay, county Assistant Chief Probation Officer Valerie Thompson clarified.

Thompson explained that youth are assigned to these programs by a judge only after the local continuum of care has been exhausted and the individual has been deemed to require a short-term stay in a facility with heightened services. But because the county is currently not home to one of these programs, local youth within the justice system must be sent to facilities in neighboring regions that are often hours away from their home and family.

Establishing an in-county camp, Thompson argued, will help these youth eventually transition back into the community while also saving about $300,000 per year in costs involved with transporting the individual to counties that host a program.

“Of course it’s not perfect, but it’s going to bring youth closer to home; it’s going to expand local, less-restrictive programming and it will save the county money,” said Supervisor Manu Koenig. “Those are three wins. It’s a win-win-win.”

In a presentation for the supervisors, Thompson said a stay at the camp typically lasts six to nine months and that no new facilities will be constructed to establish the Redwoods Coastal Academy. She added that since 2019, the county has placed 18 youth in the out-of-county camps, with 16 of those individuals traveling at least 183 miles away. She stressed that these are not programs the county always seeks out, but if the intervention is ordered by a judge, the county is required to comply.

“We do not seek to place young people in a camp,” said Thompson. “However, if they are ordered to a camp, we want to be able to serve them in Santa Cruz County.”

Thompson said this program will offer a better alternative for a local youth justice system that has already made great progress in recent years. According to Thompson, the Juvenile Hall has experienced a 79% usage reduction in the last 27 years, with the average daily population going from 47 in 1997 to nine in 2024.

Still, dozens of speakers from the public showed up to the meeting to voice opposition to the program, arguing that it only continues a painful cycle of incarceration for youth — the majority of whom come from communities in South County — that would be better served by community-based organizations.

“Community members can see this for what it is, which is widening the net of incarceration for youth,” said Irene Juarez O’Connell, co-executive director of youth-serving nonprofit Food, What?! “It has been demonstrated over and over again that keeping youth in their communities with wraparound services and safety plans is a viable alternative to incarceration.”

While county staff did host a town hall last year and convene a meeting with youth justice leaders, many speakers were frustrated by the public engagement effort, claiming haphazard planning and a lack of opportunities to share feedback, according to the staff summary.

“While keeping youth close to home is important, a ranch camp facility is not conducive to providing quality and effective programs to the youth,” said Elias Gonzales, a staff member with Motivating Individual Leadership for Public Advancement — or MILPA — a collective that promotes healing and leadership development for formerly incarcerated and system-impacted individuals. “We want similar (things), it’s there. But how do we come together to not incarcerate our young people?”

Supervisors Monica Martinez and Felipe Hernandez both voiced support for the program, but were disappointed in the public engagement so far. They asked that staff redouble its efforts to collect public input and feedback as the launch of the camp moves forward.

Supervisor Justin Cummings, expressing a similar sentiment to Koenig and Supervisor Kim De Serpa, said his hope is to divert as many youth from the justice system as possible, but the reality is that if a judge puts in an order for camp treatment, the county must carry it out. This program presents an opportunity to do that in a more effective way, he said.

“By having this as an option, we can keep people closer to their families; we can keep them within their communities,” said Cummings. “We don’t want to see youth in the system, but when they are in the system, how can we keep them closer to Santa Cruz and closer to their communities? I think this is a way of doing it.”