By Cristine Soto DeBerry

In some of California’s juvenile halls, food hasn’t just been scarce – it’s been weaponized as a form of child abuse. For years in Los Angeles County’s facilities, guards used the lack of quality meals to manipulate the children in their custody, offering fast food as a reward for violence. Guards would refer to a child they wanted beaten by telling other kids, “there’s a meal on his head,” according to a story in the Los Angeles Times.

“It’s basically a bounty. We stomp on the kid, and then we get our food,” said one 18-year-old. 

These were not isolated incidents. In March, California Attorney General Rob Bonta indicted 30 officers for orchestrating or encouraging these “gladiator fights” among incarcerated youth.

Stories of sick, twisted child abuse should shock all of us. But these horrifying instances of abuse underscore a deeper, long-standing failure: California’s juvenile facilities are not meeting the basic nutritional needs of the children in their care. A new bill, AB 802 by San Diego Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins, is a direct response to that failure.

Existing law guarantees incarcerated youth the right to adequate food, but there’s no effective mechanism of accountability. Assemblymember Sharp-Collins’ bill would change that, requiring County Juvenile Justice Commissions – state-mandated community oversight boards – to conduct a biennial survey of incarcerated youth about the quality and quantity of the food they’re provided. The survey results would be made public, and county probation departments would be able to publish policies responding to any problems identified in the surveys.

Last year, I brought a group of prosecutors into two juvenile facilities in San Diego to better understand the experiences and rehabilitation of the children living there. What we heard repeatedly from these young people was that they were hungry and not getting enough food. That visit moved my organization, Prosecutors Alliance Action, to partner with Assemblymember Sharp-Collins on AB 802. This bill is a simple, humane step toward treating detained youth with the dignity they deserve and holding local systems accountable when they fall short. 

Being incarcerated is hard enough. We cannot expect children to embrace their full potential and rehabilitate if they are distracted by hunger. Anyone with teenagers at home knows kids eat a lot – and that their behavior changes when they’re hungry. The research backs that up, both for young people in our communities and in juvenile detention facilities….