LA County Spent Fraction of $88 Million in State Funds on Youth Justice Programs: State Audit

Los Angeles County has only spent about 11 percent of $88 million in state funds received in fiscal year 2021–22 to care and supervise youth on probation, a state audit revealed Aug. 20.
The Los Angeles County Department of Probation “has yet to spend tens of millions of dollars in funding the State issued to assist the county in providing rehabilitative services for youth,” according to State Auditor Grant Parks.
The county has only spent $9.7 million of the funds, according to Parks.
The auditor also referenced the department’s responsibility to provide 26 programs, services, and goods with the funds, but had only implemented six of the items by June 2024.
“One reason for the low spending rate is that Los Angeles has yet to begin delivering many of the services that it planned to provide to realigned youth,” Parks wrote in the audit.
He suggested the county take more steps to use the funding in a timely manner.
The funding came from a Juvenile Justice Realignment Block Grant in 2021 meant to help the county pay for youth custody, care, and supervision after California began to dissolve its Division of Juvenile Justice in September 2020.
The division was fully closed in 2023 and youth probation cases were assigned to county probation departments as a result.
Los Angeles County was already responsible for supervising thousands of youth on probation before receiving more cases from the state.
Since the transition, the county has received 107 youth, according to the auditor. Of those, 41 have completed probation, 19 were serving probation at home, 24 lived in transitional housing, nine lived in youth treatment facilities, seven were wanted on a bench warrant, and another seven were in county jail facing new adult arrest charges.
The county’s Chief Probation Officer Guillermo Viera Rosa responded to the audit, saying the department had spent more funds on youths on probation, but because of a new racial and ethnic equity program called Youth Justice Reimagined, adopted by the county in 2019, the money came from other departments instead of the state grant.
Instead, the state funding, according to Rosa, is to pay for community-based providers, and mental health and drug addiction care, and other services provided by county partners.
Rosa additionally responded to the auditor’s findings, providing context.
“Despite the pace of spending not being consistent with desired results, the Probation Department is providing services for … youth that align with the needs of a generally emerging adult population,” Rosa wrote in response.
The county’s probation department provides care and custody services for youth, such as housing, security, recreation, and education. Such qualifies for state funding but are not billed to the state due to the Youth Justice Reimagined program, according to Rosa.
If the probation department’s spending for youth facilities was billed to the state, spending levels would be “significantly more robust,” Rosa said.
He said the department is aware some of its programs are not yet in operation, such as family transportation services and vocational programs. The department hopes to speed up the implementation of the programs, he said.
Additionally, three areas of the youth services program were not keeping up with state funding, Rosa said. Those include identifying facilities to house youth on probation, the identification of program service categories, and the development of the program budget.
The delays hampered the program’s ability to find appropriate program categories needed to create a budget, he added.
The state auditor recommended creating weekly staff working groups for the two facilities. In response, Rosa said such would be implemented to maintain an inventory of and monitor programs.
The state auditor also recommended the Probation Department set dates to finalize agreements with service providers, which the department has also started taking into consideration, according to Rosa.
Another 231 youth took college courses, and 564 youth were registered to vote while in probation facilities, the report noted.
Since June 2018, the state has given Los Angeles County more than $1.1 billion to fund youth justice-related activities, according to the audit. The county has also received $650,000 in federal funding from another grant, and other federal and state funding that could be used to support youth involved in the justice system.