Pepper spray usage, violence surged after L.A. County juvenile hall transfers

Pepper spray usage and violence skyrocketed at Los Angeles County’s second largest juvenile facility last year after dozens of youth were shifted there from the beleaguered Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, newly released figures from the county Probation Department show.

The transfer of about 55 youths to Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar from July through September led to a 150% spike in the use of oleoresin capsicum spray, or pepper spray, and a 23% increase in overall violent incidents, according to a comparison of data from the first and second halves of 2025.

County officials carried out the moves under a court-approved “depopulation plan” designed to scale back the number of youths at Los Padrinos, located in Downey, by redirecting some of the juveniles elsewhere. Boys facing the most serious of charges were relocated to Nidorf, while girls and gender-expansive youth went to a reworked Campus Kilpatrick in the Santa Monica Mountains.

An influx of new juveniles amid a tougher-on-crime turn in California seemingly negated those decreases, leaving Los Padrinos well above the depopulation plan’s goal of 175 youths.

Critics argue the violence and staffing shortages that have long plagued Los Padrinos have spread and are now destabilizing other facilities.

“All we’re doing is playing musical facilities,” said Milinda Kakani, executive director of the California Youth Justice Project and a member of the county Probation Oversight Commission. “We’re not doing anything to address the underlying issue, which is that there are very serious cracks in the foundation of this institution that we’re never going to be able to fix unless we release the pressure — and that is by figuring out how to decarcerate, not depopulate, a single facility by increasing the population at another.”

The oversight commission recently found the number of youths detained by L.A. County Probation in its juvenile halls, camps and other facilities increased from 558 in May — when the depopulation plan was approved — to 589 as of Dec. 31, according to the commission’s report.

“While the implementation of the Depopulation Strategy resulted in some youth moving to other facilities, it has not resulted in a meaningful reduction in the population at LPJH or the overall population of detained youth,” the report states. “Indicators such as increased OC spray usage at Barry J. Nidorf suggest that population transfers may have displaced, rather than alleviated, operational and safety challenges from LPJH to the receiving facilities.”

Pepper spray ban

The county originally planned to stop using pepper spray when it reopened Los Padrinos in July 2023, but it was quickly reinstated following an escape attempt within the first two weeks.

Vicky Waters, the spokesperson for the Probation Department, said the incidents at Nidorf were “not part of a sustained or increasing trend and do not reflect current conditions.”

“Several OC spray incidents occurred early in the transition period, when youth were adjusting to new facilities, routines and peer dynamics,” Waters said.

Pepper spray is used only when there is an immediate risk of harm, and each use is reviewed to ensure compliance with training and policy, Waters said. Deescalation is the department’s preferred response to conflict and the “overwhelming majority of incidents are resolved without any use of force,” she added.

During one incident, a teacher was attacked by three youths in November. That same month, a court-appointed watchdog noted the uptick in violence within the facility during court testimony and detailed instances of youth being forced to urinate in bags, plastic gloves and the corners of their rooms because there are not enough officers to take them to a restroom at night.

Reviews conducted by the L.A. County Office of Inspector General in the latter half of the year described fights where as many as five youths ganged up on one individual at Nidorf. Officers were found out of compliance with department policy in several instances because they failed to get youth timely medical treatment, or decontamination, but only one violation during that period involved the improper use of pepper spray.

In that case, officers failed to keep two youths separated after a fight and ended up using pepper spray when a second brawl broke out. One of the youths had restrictions due to a disability, medical or mental health issue that should have prohibited officers from using the chemical irritant on him.

After three months of highs, pepper spray use and violent incidents sharply decreased at the end of the year. Both figures peaked in September, the month the largest amount of transfers occurred. By December, the two categories had declined by about 70% and 36%, respectively.

Pepper spray was used only in about 3% of the incidents that month, Waters said.

“Most importantly, we remain focused on reducing the use of force overall through expanded training, trauma-informed practices and behavior-based interventions,” Waters said.

Despite the drop, December’s numbers remained above the six-month average prior to the increase in population.

Transfers created instability

It is difficult to say whether that will continue. One veteran probation officer at Nidorf, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said behavior tends to improve during those months in general as youth do not want to lose access to holiday visits with family.

The officer attributed the spike in violence in September to the speed at which the moves occurred and to the general instability that comes whenever a large group of new youth come into a facility. The first transfers went smoothly, the officer said, but as more showed up, the limited staff at Nidorf struggled to separate groups that might clash.

“The chief tried to space it out, but he’s up against a deadline to get that amount of young people out of Los Padrinos and into these different spaces,” the officer said. “We don’t have that many officers to supervise this population.”

“Gang politics” increased volatility as transferred youth from different neighborhoods fought to establish pecking orders in the units or singled out those without affiliations, the officer said.

“We deal with a population that has abandonment and attachment issues,” the officer said. “When they get into a new space, it can be a trigger. They can act out because they’ve been uprooted into this new space. They were comfortable, they were used to certain people, used to a daily routine and now you put them in a new space and all of that has changed and they have to adjust.”

Conditions not unexpected

In a statement, Eddie Chism, president of the L.A. County Deputy Probation Officers Union, said the conditions at Barry J. Nidorf were not unexpected as the department has failed to resolve critical staffing shortages. The department is still relying on traditional probation officers redeployed from field duties without “specialized training or experience working with youth.”

“When youth are moved by the Department into new facilities without adequate preparation, consistency or sufficient numbers of trained, permanent staff, instability increases,” Chism stated. “The rise in the use of OC spray reflects that reality. It is not indicative of officers using force unnecessarily, but rather of officers responding to elevated levels of acting-out behavior and violence in environments that are understaffed and under-resourced.”

Short-term fluctuations in violence, such as the drop in December, do not reflect a sustained improvement in safety, Chism said.

“Until facilities are properly staffed with trained juvenile probation officers and youth are placed in stable, appropriately supported settings, these conditions will continue,” Chism stated.

Reggie Torres, president of the Supervising Deputy Probation Officers Association, agreed. He said Barry J. Nidorf is now “seeing multiple gangs co-housed in facilities that were not designed or staffed for that reality.”

“The Department is trying to operate with a 28% vacancy rate and an average time to hire of 432 days,” Torres said. “That is not sustainable for officers and it is dangerous for the youth.”

Nidorf’s two facilities

Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, despite the name, is technically two facilities. Half is a Secure Youth Treatment Facility that houses youths sentenced by a judge in cases involving the most serious of crimes. That population used to be managed by the state until the dissolution of the Department of Juvenile Justice in 2023.

The other half is now — once again — a traditional juvenile hall housing “predisposition” youths, meaning juveniles who have been accused of a crime but whose cases have not been resolved.

All of the predisposition youths sent to Nidorf were selected because the department believes they are likely to end up in the Secure Youth Treatment Facility.

The juvenile hall portion was reopened in defiance of state law. The Board of State and Community Corrections ordered the closure of Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in May 2023 and declared it “unsuitable” for the confinement of youths. Such a designation requires a facility to make improvements, or empty out.

The county chose to close Nidorf and all of its youths were moved to Los Padrinos that same year. But Los Padrinos later was declared “unsuitable” as well and, amid a legal battle over its continued operation, L.A. County reopened Nidorf’s juvenile hall without the BSCC’s approval.

Failed inspections

Inspectors from the BSCC went into the juvenile hall and the SYTF in December and found both out of compliance with the state’s minimum standards for operation. Campus Kilpatrick, which now houses all of the girls in the county’s custody, failed inspections in both November and December.

Inspectors at Nidorf Juvenile Hall found that the Probation Department had opened two “unplanned” units that were not factored into its staffing plan, straining its resources and “contributing to ongoing failure to meet minimum standards.”

The juvenile hall doesn’t have emergency plans for fires or other disasters. It also continues to claim that it offers youth activities that video footage revealed did not actually take place. The Probation Department was previously chastised for this exact issue at Los Padrinos in July 2024.

“Youth spent much of the day in passive recreation such as television and video games, and many units lacked books, games or other meaningful activities,” inspectors wrote in a letter to county officials in January.

Supervisors weigh in

In November, county Supervisor Kathryn Barger tore into the department after she personally witnessed youths sitting around with nothing to do and Probation Department leaders pledged to make improvements at the time. That still had not happened in December, according to the BSCC.

In a statement, Barger described the BSCC’s findings as “concerning” and said she expects the department to address all areas of noncompliance with safety and stability as the priority.

Barger, however, said it is too early to determine whether the depopulation plan is successful.

“Stability is essential to rehabilitation, and frequent movement can disrupt services and contribute to behavioral challenges,” she said. “I am closely tracking trends over time, including use-of-force incidents, youth-on-youth violence, service continuity, staffing, and compliance with state standards.”

Supervisor Janice Hahn disagreed.

“I continue to believe that there are many young people who can and should be safely released back home, monitored with ankle monitors, or cared for in community-based placements,” Hahn stated. “Shuffling youth from one facility to another is not a strategy I support and it is not solving the crisis because we still have such serious staffing challenges.”

The BSCC is scheduled to meet for the first time this year on Feb. 12 and L.A. County is expected to be on the agenda for at least one of its facilities.

State considers lawsuit

Jana Sanford-Miller, the agency’s spokesperson, said the situation at Nidorf Juvenile Hall is unique and the agency, granted the power to initiate lawsuits by the legislature late last year, is “considering all steps available to them at this time.”

“As the board determined the facility unsuitable in 2023, youth should not have been moved to the facility until the conditions that had rendered the facility unsuitable had been remedied,” she said. “However, that did not occur.”

The inspection confirmed that “many of the issues identified in 2023” remained, she said.

For now though, the BSCC is giving the county until March to produce three different Corrective Action Plans to address the deficiencies found at Nidorf’s Juvenile Hall, the Secure Youth Treatment Facility and Kilpatrick. The county has not asked for a reinspection of Los Padrinos and that facility, too, remains “unsuitable.”

Kakani, the oversight commissioner, said the Board of Supervisors and the two judges overseeing legal challenges against L.A. County should hold the Probation Department accountable for continuing to fail inspections and for the ineffectiveness of the depopulation plan. Until real reforms occur, youth inside the facilities will continue to experience new trauma from violence, from the heavy use of OC spray and from the limited “access to fresh air on a regular basis,” Kakani said.

“Any one of us could walk inside (Los Padrinos) and tell you a more tragic story than what has been elicited over the course of many (court) hearings with monitors who allegedly spent many days within these facilities,” Kakani said. “We are losing sight of the prize, the prize being more meaningfully and thoughtfully caring for our young people, who probably the need the most support and love and care.

“It just feels so tragic,” she said.