The Facts

In 2019, the Board of Supervisors voted to close Juvenile Hall by Dec. 31, 2021.

Seven years later, it’s still operating. Jesse Alejandro Cottrell at the San Francisco Standard reports that in 2025 it cost $543,015 per youth per year, with an average daily population of just 31.

The city can’t simply “divert everyone”: the Juvenile Probation Department says 71% of 2023 admissions were mandatory under state law in its Annual Data Report 2023.

The Context

In 2020, California passed SB 823 to wind down the state youth prison system and shift DJJ-eligible youth to counties; CDCR says the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) ceased operations on June 30, 2023.

San Francisco’s DJJ realignment plan states the obvious: far from being shut down, Juvenile Hall is SF’s legally required interim Secure Youth Treatment Facility for the most serious cases.

The GrowSF Take

This is a prime example of the kind of do-nothing resolutions that San Francisco has left behind in its political realignment. The progressive supermajority on the Board of Supervisors in 2019 voted to close a crucial piece of justice infrastructure, with no plan on how to adequately handle the youth that get arrested for crimes every year, no guardrails or accountability for actually accomplishing it, and just months before the state required counties to pick up the mantle of juvenile justice.

Rather than closing juvenile hall, San Francisco must right-size it and be compliant with state law. So it’s good that the realignment process is active, but repeatedly making plans without following through is hardly more than a rhetorical exercise.

SF’s 2025 county plan describes how the DJJ Realignment Subcommittee has continued meeting, and it notes $500,000 for a facilities consultant and a conceptual redesign estimate of $100 million, which was deemed cost-prohibitive.

Meeting isn’t the same as doing. The Subcommittee’s Sept. 30, 2025 update points to another plan update in Spring 2026 with program descriptions and expenditures. We hope something has changed and there are actually adults in the room this time.