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Ending girls’ incarceration in Santa Clara County: How one California county got to zero girls incarcerated, the challenges to maintain that, and the movement that followed

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Ending girls’ incarceration in Santa Clara County: How one California county got to zero girls incarcerated, the challenges to maintain that, and the movement that followed

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Content Ending Girls’ Incarceration in Santa Clara County:
How One California County Got to Zero Girls Incarcerated, the Challenges to Maintain That,
and the Movement That Followed
by
Victoria Elena Valenziela
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION AND
JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)
December 2024
Copyright 2024 Victoria Valenzuela

Dedication
This thesis is dedicated to all of the women out there who are doing the very important
work of caring for their communities connected and resourced, especially the ones who find
empowerment with their lived experiences. It is such a resilient and powerful thing to take one’s
own misfortunes and turn it into something that helps other people much like the women in this
thesis. It is incredibly special, and it is what inspires the work I do.
ii

Acknowledgements
Throughout my time as a student at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and
Journalism, I received strong and unconditional support from many faculty members and fellow
students. It was a long four years, but during that time, my peers and professors always let me
know that there was someone in my corner. Many names come to mind, and I will do my best to
capture the immense value they have added to my education, and what that means to me.
First and foremost, I’d like to thank Mark Schoofs, Lauren Lee White, and Alan
Mittelstaedt, who together form my thesis committee, for their generous time and strong support
with helping shape this story into what it is now. Mark, Lauren, and Alan encouraged me to do
the best work possible in the short amount of time I had to work on this, and their guidance
helped me to think more critically about my writing and reporting. They also made the process of
writing this thesis itself much easier knowing that I had such kind and brilliant minds in my
corner when taking on this daunting task. Mark Schoofs especially helped champion my thesis,
and for that I’ll always be grateful.
I’d also like to thank Sandy Tolan and Geoffrey Cowan for their kindness, patience and
support since the first day I met them. Robert Scheer and Narda Zacchino also played a pivotal
role in my educational and professional development by offering mentorship to me when I had
little journalism experience, just ambitions and hope. Melissa Segura, also my mentor, has also
been such a strong source of support for my education, always reminding me how important it is
to finish getting my degree through frequent check-in calls and texts, and always being there to
listen. Narda and Melissa showed me that it is possible to be a badass investigative journalist
iii

covering criminal justice issues like wrongful convictions, and helped me realize that I could do
that work, too.
I couldn’t have done this without the support of my parents. They always strived to make
sure that I had more opportunities than they did growing up. My dad raised me on the phone
through 15-minute phone calls from prison, and my mom would take vacations from work to
support me with rides to school and taking care of my son so that I could succeed. They always
did what they could to help. My father showed me how to make the best of a terrible situation, as
he thrives against the odds in prison, and my mom taught me how to be an independent woman.
I am also acknowledging the Young Women’s Freedom Center and the Santa Clara
County Probation Department for making the time and giving me the trust and access to tell this
story and get it to the point where it is now.
Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge the support I’ve received from Melisa Cabello Cuahutle,
Amber Chen, and Brenda Eliozondo, my best friends who would always check in with me and
hold me accountable to finish my thesis. From showing up at the coffee shop I was working at
for moral support, to making study plans with me and taking my phone so that I could focus, to
random texts to make sure I was working, my friends went out of their way to support me when
they didn’t have to, and that support motivated me to finally get this done.
I was not an easy case — I took two extra years to finish my bachelor’s degree and one
extra year for my master’s. All people listed here have helped me navigate through these
challenges and showed me kindness and patience when I was the most difficult. They are the
reason I was able to stay on track and complete my master’s. That is definitely worth
acknowledging, and this will stay with me forever.
iv

Table of Contents
Dedication........................................................................................................................................ii
Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................ iii
List of Figures.................................................................................................................................vi
Abstract..........................................................................................................................................vii
Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................................1
Chapter 2: History of the Movement............................................................................................... 5
Chapter 3: The Reality of Girls’ Incarceration................................................................................ 9
Chapter 4: The Shift to Community Resources............................................................................. 14
Chapter 5: Challenges to Get to Zero............................................................................................ 17
Chapter 6: Rising Levels of Girls Incarceration............................................................................ 20
Chapter 7: The Growing Movement..............................................................................................24
References......................................................................................................................................28

List of Figures
Figure 1: Photo of Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall Dorm …………..……………………….7
Figure 2: Photo of Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall Yard……………………………………..9
Figure 3: Map of California Counties’ Daily Average of Girls Incarcerated in 2022………..….15
vi

Abstract
Santa Clara County Juvenile Court Justice Katherine Lucero saw case after case of girls accused
of minor offenses that would land them in jail. In 2015, she and other court officials sought a
more humane, equitable and productive way of dealing with girls and gender-expansive youth
who posed little risk to public safety. Working with community advocates and service providers,
many of whom had themselves been incarcerated as girls, they created alternatives to sentencing
with powerful results: The number of incarcerated girls in Santa Clara County dropped from
more than 200 to zero for more than a year.
Their success has inspired a larger movement to reduce girls’ incarceration or eliminate it
altogether. Four other California counties – Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and Imperial –
followed suit. Similar programs are in place in New York, Maine and Hawaii.
This thesis follows Leah Garza, who was incarcerated as a girl for minor crimes and who returns
four years later to the same juvenile court, this time as an advocate helping to persuade judges to
put girls in supportive programs rather than in detention, as well as other activists and juvenile
justice officials. Together, they upended rigid systems that, they say, too often meted out
sentences that did more harm than good and discriminated against girls of color.
Challenges remain for movement to end girls’ incarceration. In Santa Clara County, the number
of girls behind bars crept up to six. Some probation officers believe the best place for offenders
to find helpful resources is behind bars. And there are hard cases, such as girls who have
vii

threatened or committed violent crimes, or who have such severe mental health issues that
community groups refuse to take them in. Judges sometimes decide to keep those girls behind
bars. Yet the movement is rippling out beyond Santa Clara County, aided by local networks of
dedicated activists.
viii

Chapter 1: Introduction
One week before Leah Garza was born, her mother was released from prison. As Garza grew up,
her mother and father cycled in and out of incarceration, while her older brother spent stints in
juvenile hall — Garza remembers attending his high school graduation at a juvenile facility
known as the ranch. In 2020, when she was 17 years old, Garza herself was arrested for
shoplifting and battery, after hitting a clerk who tripped her and tried to lock her in the store.
Garza spent six days in a juvenile hall in Santa Clara County.
Four years later, in March of this year, Garza was back in the same juvenile courthouse — but
this time acting as a court advocate, helping a 15-year-old girl named Jaelyn who had been
languishing in juvenile hall for almost three weeks. (Jaelyn’s surname is being withheld because
she is still a minor.) Garza, who is now majoring in justice studies at DeAnza College,
understood — intellectually and in her bones — the root causes that had led Jaelyn into the
system. She convinced the judge and probation officer that Jaelyn just needed one-on-one
support and a personalized action plan, not incarceration. They released her.
Garza is more than just a person who defied the odds. She is part of a movement in Santa Clara
County to eliminate the incarceration of girls, a movement powered in large part by people who
were impacted by an incarceration of their own or a loved one. Their movement has achieved
surprising success — and hit stubborn challenges.
1

Not long after Garza left incarceration in December 2020, the county was able to achieve and
maintain zero girls incarcerated for an entire year. Across California and the rest of the country,
the number of girls behind bars has been steadily declining.
Like Garza and Jaelyn, most girls who enter the criminal justice system are charged with low
level offenses and have suffered a disproportionate amount of adverse childhood experiences —
even more so than incarcerated boys.
A case file review of Santa Clara County’s youth admissions in 2019 found that family violence
was the leading cause for girls’ incarceration. Other common reasons for the incarceration of a
girl in the county are sex trafficking, school based arrest and probation violations. The case
review also indicated that each year, 10% of girls' admissions had been due to the inability to
return home. The same review found that 90% of the girls in SCC incarcerated were Latinas.
Additionally, 22% of youth incarcerated in SCC that year had reported to be part of the LGBTQ+
community, all of whom had histories of family rejection, sexual and physical abuse and neglect.
Family history was another vital element. Nearly 70% of the girls had parents who had also been
incarcerated.
Putting girls with these experiences behind bars won’t help, Garza and others in the movement to
end girls’ incarceration said, believing that it will harm them by making them less likely to build
productive lives, and make them more likely to return to a life of crime. Instead of incarceration,
the thinking goes, these girls need support and services. So nearly a decade ago, when Santa
2

Clara County incarcerated more than 200 girls in juvenile detention facilities, leaders including a
juvenile court judge and the head of the county’s probation department partnered with
community organizations led by formerly incarcerated girls.
Together, they instituted a Juvenile Justice Gender Responsive Collaborative which bound
stakeholders together and created best practices such as avoiding incarceration for low and
medium risk girls and allowing them to be released to loved ones beyond immediate family in
case they need somewhere to stay.
After driving down the number of incarcerated girls to zero in 2021, the number of girls behind
bars in Santa Clara County has crept back up and now stands at six. That’s a tiny number in a
county of almost 1.9 million people, but it shows the immense challenges of eliminating —
completely — the incarceration of girls.
The movement faces entrenched attitudes about juvenile justice and the girls who end up in
contact with the system. And now that they have diverted most girls away from juvenile hall and
into community support programs, there still remain excruciatingly hard individual cases: girls
who committed or threatened to commit violent crimes, or who suffer from such severe mental
illness that placements refuse to take them in.
Despite those challenges, at least four other California counties — Los Angeles, San Diego,
Imperial and Sacramento — have followed Santa Clara’s lead and launched their own initiatives.
3

In other states, efforts are also underway in Hawaii, New York and Maine. Santa Clara’s program
shows both the promise and the limitations of the movement.
“A lot of the trauma that came from juvenile hall and the mental health issues could have been
avoided had they just let me be a part of the diversion program at Young Women's Freedom
Center, and still be released,” Garza said. “There really was no point holding me for six days.”
4

Chapter 2: History of the Movement
The rolling hills of Santa Clara County are home to Silicon Valley and Stanford University. The
county’s wealth — its median household income of $150,000 is double that of the country as a
whole — can mask the 12% of its population who live in poverty. It’s liberal, with Joe Biden
carrying more than 72% of the vote in 2020. Some call San Jose — the county’s largest city and
the seat of its juvenile hall and juvenile court — the feminist capital of the world.
Back in 2015, former Juvenile Justice Judge Katherine Lucero and Chief Probation Officer Nick
Birchard believed the county’s juvenile justice system was tilted against girls, and they started
brainstorming how to make services more equitable for incarcerated girls. Incarcerated boys had
more programs than the girls did, they said, but they realized that wasn’t the biggest problem.
They noticed the patterns of homelessness, probation violations, family conflict and history of
abuse that so many of the girls faced.
During her 22 years as a judge Lucero saw girls being given harsh sentences, even for minor
nonviolent offenses, in harsher ways that she said boys were not. She said it seemed like people
were more in favor of incarcerating girls to “protect them” in a culture of paternalism and
protectionism, and did not give the same treatment to the boys. Some probation officers believe
that girls are better suited in the system because they lack the drive to attend programming
otherwise and have constant access to resources.
“There was a particular nuance in juvenile justice court where there was this extra layer of
protecting girls versus just holding them accountable for offenses that I didn't see with the boy,”
5

Lucero said. “There was always this default as a judge in juvenile justice, to punish and to kind
of protect a girl in a way that was very different.”
Several studies have found that girls are more likely to be detained for low-level offenses, and to
also be held for longer periods of time for such offenses, than boys. They can also fall into the
justice system through trying to meet basic needs by engaging in robbery, sex or drug trafficking,
or property crimes.
An annual report from the Santa Clara County Probation Department found that 95 boys arrested
in 2018 were determined to be high risk, where there were 22 girls found to be high risk that
year. The report also found that 81% of girls who came into contact with the county’s system
were influenced by emotional factors and 63% had a history of family problems, compared to
63% of boys with emotional factors and 39% with family problems.
Lucero and Birchard decided to try to end the incarceration of girls in the county. They called a
meeting with leaders from the probation department, Young Women’s Freedom Center, Office of
Women’s Policy, District Attorney’s office and two youth chairs to begin conversations around
what role each stakeholder should play to reduce girls’ incarceration. These meetings became
monthly and eventually resulted in a best practice guide. They also brought on assistance from
the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit fighting mass incarceration, which helped the county
conduct a case review and determine that many of their incarcerated girls were not a risk to
public safety.
6

“You won't find that in a lot of other jurisdictions, everybody's in their own silos, whether it's
behavioral health, medical, everybody works in silos, but we've always had a very open and
collaborative working relationship with all of our stakeholders,” Birchard said.
Ending girls' incarceration doesn't mean just throwing open the jailhouse doors and letting girls
walk free. Advocates instead push for programs like youth leadership groups, alternative housing
and economic mobility opportunities to help girls break the cycle of incarceration and develop
aspirations beyond crime. Lucero said she has seen young women who are supported in these
programs go on to higher education and become legislators, advocacy leaders and business
owners.
“I hope to achieve a healthier family unit, a healthier young person, a healthier community with
young people that become assets to their communities, rather than identified as someone that has
to be managed for their whole life by a public system,” Lucero said.
Birchard, the probation officer, said that sometimes a girl would run away — or “abscond” in
legal terms — for her own safety only to be arrested for loitering on the street. He said that the
county makes an extra effort to get youth connected with their family, and has expanded the
definition of family to include extended family, mentors, and parents of friends so that the girls
can live in the community instead of behind bars. “We found out that girls who maybe have been
brought into custody were releasable, but their parents wouldn't come pick them up,” Birchard
said.
7

The current number of girls incarcerated in long term detention in Santa Clara County is six,
which Birchard said is high for the county. He also said that a challenge to the county’s goal to
get to zero girls incarceration was the Newsom Administration’s decision last year to close all of
the state’s youth prisons. Now counties are responsible for incarcerating the youth who had been
in those facilities. Lucero encourages all counties to conduct their own assessments and build
collaboratives to get youth back into their communities.
“Every young person who ends up in the juvenile justice system who have landed here in our
purview have really big lives, and they're talented, and they're smart, and they have dreams,”
Lucero said. “That's what we want to focus on.
8

Chapter 3: The Reality of Girls’ Incarceration
When Garza entered Santa Clara County’s Juvenile Hall in December 2020, she was patted
down, fingerprinted, went through a mental and medical evaluation, showered and changed into
the county's uniform. When she arrived at the dorm, she had to wait while the officers prepared
the unit. The County had already been diverting girls from incarceration, so it had been awhile
since they had any girls in the system.
“He was like, ‘We haven't had anyone in for a month, so we need some time to get the unit
ready,’” Garza said. “It was around the time that they were getting to zero. I was expecting to
walk into a dorm with other girls, and they were like, ‘There's no other girls.’”
Figure 1: Photo of Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall Dorm
9

A dorm of units at Santa Clara County juvenile hall. Each door holds a unit with two beds and a
toilet. By the time she got into her unit, it was an hour until dinner, so she used the time to
organize her temporary belongings. She was given three bras, three underwear, and one uniform.
Her toilet was a foot away from her bed, and the mirror was so cheap that it was hard to see her
reflection. She would count the bricks of the empty space to pass time, and since she was the
only girl in the dorm, the staff would give her extra snacks.
On her second day there, the probation officers had a movie night for the dorm, and Garza was
the only one there. She also remembers them hosting a “girls day” where they brought out
supplies for her to polish her nails. Sometimes Garza would wake up before the guard was ready
to let her out, so she remembers some mornings of waiting. It was a rainy December so she
didn’t get access to the yard, which is typically allowed for up to six hours per day, every day —
but even when she did, she remembers the balls would be flat. Since the juvenile hall was under
lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic, her mother was not allowed to visit. “I was just trying to
find the bare minimum to keep myself sane throughout my time,” Garza said.
While incarcerated, the guards would antagonize Garza about having known her family from
their incarcerations. One officer recognized her last name and asked about her father. Another
guard brought her extra pillows because she remembered her brother, and told Garza to tell him
she said ‘hi’, which she said she appreciated but also made her feel uncomfortable.
“It's not that they think it's a joke, but it's kind of funny to them, like, ‘Yeah, I know your family,
I know your dad, I know your mom. Now I know you,’” Garza said.
10

Garza also saw a behavioral health specialist who assessed her history of trauma and diagnosed
her with anxiety. But Garza couldn’t tell if she always had anxiety, or if it was a result from her
incarceration. She said that the very fact of having her trauma assessed as one of the first things
she did in juvenile hall caused anxiety and took an emotional toll. After the assessment, she was
left alone in a cell to sit and think about all the traumatic things that ever happened to her.
“I don't know if that was me really noticing it, because it was actually spoken to me that I had a
mental health issue, or if it was coming from being incarcerated and actually forming that
disorder over time from being by myself in a cell for six days and with no one around,” Garza
said.
Figure 2: Photo of Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall Yard
11

Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall outside yard, where youth are allowed to play for up to six
hours a day, three hours at a time. Garza was confused about why she was incarcerated and not
allowed to go home with her mother. She had no prior record and had a job at Target at the time.
She had also recently graduated from high school a semester early by attending an independent
learning charter school, and was just two weeks out from starting at DeAnza College. Her
brother, who had been in and out of incarceration since Garza was seven, had done more and
been faced with less.
“I was like, 'Well, I'm not a violent person, y'all could just let me go,’ but it wasn't that easy to
them,” Garza said. “Doing so many assessments and talking to counselors and therapists and
mental health and behavioral health, they still didn't trust me, to be like, ‘Okay, we're gonna let
her go home with her mom.’” She was released after a court hearing on the following Tuesday
morning.
Analisa Ruiz, policy director at the Young Women’s Freedom Center and a self determination
advocate, which is similar to a case manager, with the YWFC received a referral from the public
defender’s office to support her at the detention hearing. Ruiz told the judge and probation
officer about the resources that the YWFC could provide her with as a diversion if they allowed
Garza to come home. Garza said she didn’t know how to talk to a judge, but Ruiz helped her, and
continued a relationship with her even after the court hearing.
12

Ruiz said that another aspect to court support is teaching young people how to advocate for
themselves in court and to tell their life story in a way that is empowering, “not just selling
trauma porn to anybody, but in a way that helps the court to really understand, ‘Hey, I'm a
human. This is my life. These are all the things that are impacted by this whole scenario and
situation, and this is what's going to be best for me,’” said Ruiz.
“I felt like I didn't have a voice in the juvenile courtroom, so having an advocate to be able to
step in and be like, ‘Okay, I can say this for you’ or ‘I can teach you how you can advocate for
yourself’, and that's really what it was about,” Garza said.
Garza still faced burglary charges, and the judge was pressing to give her six months probation.
She kept fighting the case and eventually had it dismissed in April, five months later. When the
judge finally dropped the charges, a YWFC coordinator took Garza to a local Mexican restaurant
in celebration, where she ordered enchiladas rojas.
“It took another person having to come in and be like, ‘No, the place for her to be is home with
these supports in place like this is what's gonna make it work,’ which was YWFC,” Garza said.
13

Chapter 4: The Shift to Community Resources
The first time Garza visited the YWFC, she was skeptical. She had just gotten out of juvenile
hall that week and although it wasn’t a court mandated program, she was still referred to it by the
probation officer. Garza had seen her older brother cycle through similar programs with nothing
seeming to stick. She was prepared for the same outcome.
“By the time it was my turn, I was kind of like, ‘Yeah, this is not gonna work, look where he's
at,’” Garza said. “I kind of just looked back at his path and nothing worked for him.”
Located in downtown San Jose, the YWFC office is on a street bustling with youth. Sometimes
staff find themselves calling down to young people from the windows to invite them up or telling
them to refer to their friends.
Garza said that the center instantly felt like home. There were girls her age holding support
groups, and some of them were in the back room eating Cup O' Noodles. She was greeted by a
self determination coordinator who reminded her of her mother, who would also become her
mentor. Garza remembers thinking of her as “someone that I could tell, ‘Okay, you've probably
been through some similar struggles like me.’” She said that familiarity allowed her to form a
stronger connection than with a therapist or counselor who didn’t have lived experience.
“I was just a little bit more comfortable because when I walked in, she kind of looked like
someone that I would, not hang around with, but someone maybe in my family,” Garza said.
14

Garza said she started attending groups more frequently as she got closer to the people there, and
the programs taught her about operating in survival mode. Her parents didn’t have experience
navigating higher education, but her mentor at YWFC was able to help her work on college
applications and resumes. After a couple months, Garza got an internship with the center and
began helping with outreach by promoting their programs in malls and the streets.
This led her to a fellowship where she began creating her own programs such as “healing your
inner child”, “building my power”, and “who am I?” She also advocates at court and mentors
young people in achieving their own goals. She said that she never thought that she “would be on
the other side doing the work that I'm doing now”. She had originally wanted to be a nurse.
“Trying to end girls' incarceration, or trying to support the youth and their leadership, or gain
them up to get economic opportunities, I just never thought this was something that I would be
passionate about,” Garza said. “But I think when I really got to see, like, ‘Oh, wow, that's
someone like my mom being a self determination advocate, they kind of have the similar stories
that my parents have gone through,’ that's when I was like, ‘Okay, this is for me.’”
The purpose behind these offerings is to empower young people to heal and become leaders in
their communities: “a lot of our folks were navigating situations where they were still very much
in survival mode, which is why they saw themselves coming back into the system,” said Alexis
Roman, site director at the YWFC.
15

Roman said it is important to have youth advocates in the space to talk about what they and their
friends are going through, and advocate for what they need instead of anyone telling them what
is best for them. “
The young people are the experts in this work, and that's something that I've truly admired,”
Roman said. “The youth are the ones who are leading the change … we knew that in order to get
those numbers to be reduced, we had to put organizations and leaders at the front lines.”
“Historically, it's always been the marginalized, the displaced, the criminalized, who have been
removed from decision making spaces,” she added.
16

Chapter 5: Challenges to Get to Zero
Not everyone is on board with the initiative. Daniel Cortez, supervising counselor in Santa Clara
County’s juvenile hall, believes that girls who commit offenses and are let out to the community
will not go to programming on their own initiative. He said he believes girls are better suited in
the juvenile hall, where they have access to programming and have access to resources around
the clock.
Cortez said he also believes that the increase of girls incarcerated has to do with them being let
out of incarceration too soon without being given the chance to rehabilitate. At the time he
spoke, eight girls were incarcerated, and Cortez said that all of them had been detained before.
“I remember having conversations [with Judge Lucero] when she was our presiding judge, and
said, ‘I'm really happy that you know you are striving for this goal, but it doesn't seem very
realistic to me,’” said Cortez, who has been with the SCC probation department for 27 years,
said.
Cortez also said he sees a change in the way arrests are made: “cops used to arrest the kid for a
stolen vehicle and bring them in here, but now, because of how we score our risk assessment
instrument when they come in, we don't keep those kids in custody.” The county uses a risk
assessment tool to determine who should be held in custody pretrial, and that was modified to
prioritize the release of low and medium risk girls.
17

“These girls don't have the drive to just go and take a bus to the other side of town to go to this
program,” Cortez said. “There are so many different resources [in the juvenile hall]. They're
getting three meals a day. They're getting snacks, they're getting educational programs, they're
getting enrichment programs. They're doing art contests, fun things, like, it can be fun being in
custody.”
Roman says that the YWFC sees the opposite. Girls referred to them by probation, show up and
are disappointed when curriculum ends or gets canceled. She said she is “proud and excited to
see how much youth have transitioned and grown from the moments that I’ve seen them in
facilities.” Not only are youth participating in the programs, but they are also leading them.
“As a youth leadership and advocacy organization, we equip tools for youth with the tools to
learn about how policies impact not only themselves, but their communities and … learning
more about the power of your voice, the power of your story, how to tell your story in a way that
is empowering, not disempowering.”
She noticed that since Lucero left and a new judge has stepped into her shoes, and as the
probation department underwent new staffing, the YWFC has been getting fewer referrals to help
girls on their court day or to reintegrate back into the community. She said 90% of girls who
complete their programs go on to find success in opportunities such as getting college degrees,
finishing probation, opening their own business or starting families. Roman said that
incarceration is “perpetuating a cycle of violence and harmful policies.”
18

Since the initiative started, Roman said she’s seen a drop in recidivism. According to the YWFC,
youth who complete their programs are 85% less likely to recidivate.
“Creating alternatives that are responsive to the needs of the community, that's something that I
think a lot of people can say they know and they agree with, and yet it's a lot harder to do that
because it requires a lot of heart into this work,” Roman said.
19

Chapter 6: Rising Levels of Girls Incarceration
By the end of October 2020, all of SCC’s efforts reaped the rewards of their work. The county
had hit zero girls incarcerated for the first time. This lasted for about a year. “The day I left the
bench, January 14, 2022, we had zero girls in custody,” Lucero said.
Figure 3: Map of California Counties’ Daily Average of Girls Incarcerated in 2022
20

“That was when we realized, like, ‘Hey, we did it. We can do it. And that work was in deep
partnership with our young people, because we had folks inside letting us know what they
needed,” Ruiz said.
Despite the county’s landmark success to get to zero girls incarcerated until 2022, it has not seen
the complete elimination of detained girls since then. The girls who are currently incarcerated
often pose hard challenges. According to Santa Clara County Juvenile Justice Judge Jose Franko,
all three of the girls who are currently detained in the juvenile hall have a history of violence and
mental health issues. The charges the girls faced range from armed robbery to threat of murder.
He thinks the variable that changed is the nature of crimes the girls are committing.
One of the incarcerated girls, who is there for allegedly threatening to kill her family, has been
having delusions and mental health issues since she was six years old, said Franko. He said he
was worried that if he released her into the community to receive resources like those provided
by the YWFC because it would be “a place where she could go and walk away.” “I did not want
to detain her, but I had nowhere to send her,” Franko said. He said she will be released “once
services are in place.”
Franko said another girl who is currently incarcerated had so much trauma, mental health needs
and violence in her past that she was turned down by 72 group homes. He said that some
placements and alternatives can be skeptical when kids have high needs, which can lead them
into the system.
21

“When these places are reluctant, there's nowhere else to go, that's when a girl gets incarcerated,”
Franko said.
Advocates and local officials including former judge Lucero had been advocating against
incarcerating a girl who lacked a place to be released to. She said it is necessary to place youth
back into their communities. “I think everybody, DAs, probation, even sometimes child welfare,
thinks that the response should be incarceration,” Lucero said. “I knew that wasn't effective, I
knew that was more harmful.” From Franko’s point of view, the girls cannot be put into the
community if they have nowhere to go or if no one will take them.
Even after Jaelyn had been released from juvenile hall with Garza’s help, she continued on a
rough path. She would still miss school and seemed to lack the motivation to get up every
morning to do what she needed to do, said Garza. Sometimes Garza would get texts from
Jaelyn’s probation officer asking her to check in with her. At one point Jaelyn went back to
juvenile hall.
Even so, Jaelyn continued to check in with Garza, who would still attend her court hearings and
help. Garza was able to help Jaelyn transfer to the same independent learning high school she
graduated from to have more individualized support, emphasized the importance of education
and talked to her about discipline to complete her school. At one point, Jaelyn told Garza how
much she appreciates her and that she’s the only person she has.
22

“No matter if she keeps going back in numerous times, we're gonna be there to support her and
advocate for her,” Garza said. “And we did, they released her, and now she goes back next month
to do a review for her probation.”
Gomez said that she thinks the rise of girls incarcerated since the pandemic has to do with
individual decision making, since some of the practices that helped end girls’ incarceration are
not institutionalized or codified, meaning that they could be undone with a leadership change.
While the best practice guidelines make recommendations to consistently reduce girls’
incarceration, that remains with the discretion of local officials to enforce it.
“Now we're trying to figure out, how do we institutionalize these things, so it's not an individual
making the decision whether they're going to be flexible or not, or whether they're going to be
compassionate or not, but it's the actual policy in place,” Gomez said.
23

Chapter 7: The Growing Movement
Reducing girls' incarceration is happening around California – a state that makes up 13% of
girls’ incarceration nationally — not just Santa Clara County.
In 2021, there were over 1,400 admissions of girls and gender-expansive youth to juvenile halls
in California, which is still a 71% decrease since 2012. Incarceration disproportionately impacts
girls of color, as California's girls’ detention population is over 50% Latina, and Black girls make
up 25% of all girls’ detention admissions despite being only 8% of California's overall youth
population.
According to the Vera Institute, California is on track to end girls’ incarceration by 2027 at the
current rate it's going. To further support efforts to curb the incarceration of girls in counties
beyond Santa Clara, the Vera Institute partnered last year with the Office of Youth and
Community Restoration in California to offer assistance and award $1 million grants to four
other counties. One of those is Los Angeles.
With more than 10 million residents, Los Angeles is California’s most populous county, and it
incarcerates more girls than any other county — a daily average of 35 in 2022. Almost 20 other
counties in California had a daily average of zero.
Los Angeles is also home to one of the most notorious juvenile detention centers in the country,
Los Padrinos. More than 2,300 adults have reported being abused when they were minors in the
custody of Los Angeles County probation-run facilities going back as early as the 1990s. Experts
24

have said the abuse reports are unprecedented for a local government. Los Padrinos, reopened
this year following a four year closure due to high reports of abuse.
Still, there is a network of advocates in LA aiming to continue Santa Clara County’s momentum
to end girls’ incarceration.
In 2022, Jacqueline “Jaki” Murillo sat in a LA County Courtroom watching a 14 year old girl
and her 13 year old friend stand trial, acting as a court advocate with the YWFC much like Garza
and Ruiz. Murillo encouraged the judge not to incarcerate them. She wanted to help the girls
because they reminded her of herself and her friends when they were younger.
Murillo, who was incarcerated when she was 12 years old, was sentenced to 14 months in
juvenile detention for running away from home and violating her probation. She was so young
that she was held in solitary confinement for nearly a year until she turned 13, to be kept away
from the older girls.
She said that she had run away from her home because she was having issues with her stepdad.
A police officer found and arrested her, and she was given a trial. Murillo said that when she
appeared before a judge as a 12 year old, that judge had intimidated her mother, who did not
speak English, out of giving up custody. Murrillo got a 14-month sentence in juvenile hall.
“I felt so betrayed by everybody that raised me,” Murillo said. “I went through a lot of things that
I didn't know how to deal with. I didn't feel understood.”
25

Like Garza, Murillo’s experiences with the system made her want to help youth in similar
situations.
Since then, Murillo has helped pass a law that prevents youth from being held in solitary
confinement for more than four hours at a time, among five other laws she worked on. She is
also involved with helping youth in her community — she said there are 19 teenagers in her
neighborhood whom she helps keep out of trouble. She mentors them, she said, and they call her
“Mama Jaki”. At one point, she said, she was working a job cleaning motel rooms just to get
unhoused kids a place to sleep for a night.
“I'm just doing whatever is best for them not to get incarcerated,” Murillo said. “A lot of these
kids in the neighborhood don't have parents, so the fact that they call me ‘Mama Jacki’, I take
that really seriously.”
Murillo worked with the YWFC for six years, during which she supported youth. She was able to
earn their trust and respect because she had once been where they were. Even though she doesn’t
work for YWFC anymore, she still finds herself referring girls she meets.
According to Lindsay Rosenthal, director of the end girls’ incarceration initiative at the Vera
Institute, Los Angeles County is now receiving support similar to what Santa Clara County did to
identify program priorities and make policy and practice changes to help reach zero girls in
custody. She said LA County is sometimes still charging girls for misdemeanors, and the county
26

is also working on a way to divert the more serious cases out of incarceration and into
community support, but the large caseload is making progress slow.
“I'm hopeful that, even though there's sort of been a lot of challenges in Los Angeles, over the
next year, we can really see some progress on actually getting girls out,” Rosenthal said.
Rosenthal said that Imperial County — a county of 179,174 people — was able to get to zero
girls quickly while San Diego County struggled with keeping girls charged with misdemeanors
out of detention. She also said that the movement has had success in Hawaii, which started its
work in 2018 and was able to get to zero and maintain it for several months after. She said that
no jurisdiction that has gotten to zero has been able to maintain it indefinitely, yet she said that
her organization still aims to eliminate the incarceration of girls nationally by 2030.
She added, “We really hope that California is kind of setting a roadmap for how we can do this
nationwide.”
27

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32

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Santa Clara County Juvenile Court Justice Katherine Lucero saw case after case of girls accused of minor offenses that would land them in jail. In 2015, she and other court officials sought a more humane, equitable and productive way of dealing with girls and gender-expansive youth who posed little risk to public safety. Working with community advocates and service providers, many of whom had themselves been incarcerated as girls, they created alternatives to sentencing with powerful results: The number of incarcerated girls in Santa Clara County dropped from more than 200 to zero for more than a year.

Their success has inspired a larger movement to reduce girls’ incarceration or eliminate it altogether. Four other California counties – Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and Imperial – followed suit. Similar programs are in place in New York, Maine and Hawaii.

This thesis follows Leah Garza, who was incarcerated as a girl for minor crimes and who returns four years later to the same juvenile court, this time as an advocate helping to persuade judges to put girls in supportive programs rather than in detention, as well as other activists and juvenile justice officials. Together, they upended rigid systems that, they say, too often meted out sentences that did more harm than good and discriminated against girls of color.

Challenges remain for movement to end girls’ incarceration. In Santa Clara County, the number of girls behind bars crept up to six. Some probation officers believe the best place for offenders to find helpful resources is behind bars. And there are hard cases, such as girls who have

threatened or committed violent crimes, or who have such severe mental health issues that community groups refuse to take them in. Judges sometimes decide to keep those girls behind bars. Yet the movement is rippling out beyond Santa Clara County, aided by local networks of dedicated activists.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Valenzuela, Victoria (author)

Core Title Ending girls’ incarceration in Santa Clara County: How one California county got to zero girls incarcerated, the challenges to maintain that, and the movement that followed

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Degree Conferral Date 2024-12

Publication Date 09/25/2024

Defense Date 09/25/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag abolition,activism,Criminal Justice,feminism,incarceration,OAI-PMH Harvest

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Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Schoofs, Mark (committee chair), Mittelstaedt, Alan (committee member), White, Lauren Lee (committee member)

Creator Email vevalenz@usc.edu,victoria.elenavalenzuela@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC11399B6BA

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