Two Glimpses Inside
Santa Barbara’s Juvenile
Justice Center in 2015
Incarceration, Isolation,
and an Evolving System
By Richard Ross | November 30, 2023
Read our cover story on Santa Barbara’s Juvenile Justice System here.
Residents of the Juvenile Justice Center today were not able to be documented by Independent journalists because of COVID and privacy regulations, according to center staff. However, Richard Ross, a Santa Barbara artist and author who has been documenting incarcerated youth for decades, was granted access to Santa Barbara Juvenile Detention Center residents in 2015.
These are two glimpses of two teenage residents of the center: a girl and a boy. They are referred to by their initials to protect their privacy.
In addition to interviewing and photographing at the Santa Maria center, Ross has visited juvenile facilities in 35 states. “Many of the young people are living in conditions similar to these — rarely better and more often much worse.”
The common elements of too many centers are a lack of home-like surroundings: plastic mattresses, sometimes with no sheets; minimal mental-health facilities; and a lack of overall humanity,” he said. Many centers still put kids in isolation cells.
Santa Barbara County has ceased the practice, according to Chief Benton, but it was in common use when Ross was given access.
Ross runs juvenile-in-justice.com website. He most recently released the book Art as a Weapon for Justice: A Guidebook for Change.
“A family member gave me meth at a party when I was 9,” said MC, one female resident. (The names of juveniles are withheld.) “She thought it would be cool. I have been trying to kick it since. I was trying to be cool. I was 9!”
“That’s all that I knew, was meth. Two months ago, I didn’t remember what it was like to be sober,” MC recalled. The next month was her 18th birthday. “I think I will get out then. I don’t know where I will go.”
Another kid at the center, KS, age 16, had been sleeping on park benches or with friends since he was 8 years old. Struggles with addiction had made it difficult for his mom to take care of him and his sister.
“I didn’t really have a home,” he said. Child Protective Services “never really knew who I was.”
KS also spent his youth in and out of the center on technical probation violations. “I was 12 or 13 when I first came here. I was with a friend, and we just wanted to drive his aunt’s car around. I saw the car with the keys in it. We put it in reverse, and I wrecked it. It was in the parking lot in Santa Maria. I have been on probation violations and in trouble here ever since.”
A split-second decision at 12 pushed him into a cycle of secondary charges he was unable to escape. The majority of his life since that moment had been spent in detention centers and group homes.
It was easier to count the time spent outside. “Once, I spent nine months out with my family. I got violated again, so I got sent inside,” he recalled. “I forgot to call my probation officer, and she arrested me.”
KS’s life might have been very different if his interactions at the center would have been more helpful, as county officials said they are trying to do now. Research shows that detention often pulls young people deeper into the juvenile and criminal justice systems, and it interrupts their ability to mature out of the behaviors that landed them in detention in the first place.
At the time he was interviewed, KS was looking at another eight years in adult prison after a fight at the center. This 16-year-old has been held in isolation for six to seven weeks.
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