A young person attends a community college class. Another holds a part-time job. Another takes public transit to a counseling appointment across town. These steps might seem ordinary, but in California’s juvenile justice system they are deliberate. Rehabilitation does not happen behind a locked door. It happens when young people begin reconnecting with the community they will eventually return to.
That is why programs allowing supervised or monitored furloughs exist. They create structured opportunities for young people in custody to attend school, job training, or counseling outside a facility while still under supervision. The purpose is simple: to prepare them for the day they reenter society so they are less likely to commit new crimes.
Recently, Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner questioned that approach after a young man serving time for a murder committed at age 17 allegedly cut off his GPS monitor and left a community college class he had been allowed to attend. Wagner called the program “a bad idea,” arguing there is “no good reason why these folks who are dangerous to the community should be roaming free,” and suggested eliminating furloughs altogether.
The problem with that response is that it ignores a basic reality of juvenile law: people who commit crimes as minors are not sentenced to die in prison. In California, someone who committed a crime at 17, even murder, will almost certainly be released at age 25. The question is not whether that will happen. The question is whether that person will leave custody prepared to live in the community or whether they will be released abruptly after years behind bars with no transition at all.
Programs that allow education or work outside a facility exist because the second option is far more likely to produce failure. Gradual reintegration allows young people to rebuild connections to school, employment, and community while still being monitored. It gives correctional staff and judges the opportunity to evaluate how someone functions outside confinement before full release. The goal is not to reward someone for past behavior. The goal is to reduce the likelihood they might commit another crime.
Wagner’s criticism also rests on the unproven assumption that the young man involved in this incident remains a danger to the community. We do not know that. We do not know why he left the class. We do not know what circumstances led to the violation or what information the judge reviewed before allowing the furlough. As far as we know, no one was hurt in this incident. This appears to be a violation of supervision rules, not a new act of violence. Yet Wagner’s statements treat the worst possible interpretation as established fact.
Supervisor Wagner has also stated that the young man does not “deserve” access to the program, which misses the point entirely. Rehabilitation programs are not prizes handed out based on moral judgment. They are tools used to improve public safety by reducing recidivism. Whether someone deserves education or structured reentry is irrelevant. What matters is whether those opportunities make communities safer in the long run.
Equally troubling is the suggestion that one incident should lead to eliminating the program altogether. These decisions are not made automatically. Judges review case histories, behavioral records, risk assessments, and recommendations from probation staff before allowing someone in custody to participate in outside programming. Replacing those individualized decisions with a blanket prohibition would not make the system more thoughtful. It would simply make it more rigid.
What it does not justify is dismantling an entire approach to juvenile rehabilitation.
California’s juvenile justice system has evolved because decades of research and court rulings recognize that young people have a unique capacity for change. Policies built around education, treatment, and gradual reintegration reflect that reality. Eliminating programs that allow supervised community participation would not remove risk. It would simply delay that risk until the day someone is released with no preparation at all.
Policy made in reaction to a single story rarely produces good results. Criminal justice history is full of laws passed after isolated incidents that later proved counterproductive. Before dismantling programs designed to prepare young people for the inevitable return to society, policymakers should ask whether doing so would actually make communities safer. The answer here is an obvious “no.”
Sean Garcia-Leys is executive director of the Peace and Justice Law Center in Santa Ana and a former commissioner of the Los Angeles Probation Oversight Commission.